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Charles Tiayon
February 19, 2021 11:50 PM
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This week California’s Judicial Council cancelled a statewide plan for AI translation at court counters after legal-aid groups gathered pilot transcripts in which translators found errors. In the same days Google Meet began rolling out Gemini speech translation in 63 languages, and Abu Dhabi unveiled an Arabic model built to follow dialects and code-switching. Tools advance fast; courts, where one wrong word has consequences, ask for proof.
The profession is pulled in two directions. The 2026 European Master’s in Translation framework redefines translator competence around AI, yet a translator in Prague says her faculty celebrates her prize while a reorganisation could close its translation institute, and UK modern-language degrees keep closing. Meanwhile communities write their own answers: Gabon works towards one alphabet for 53 local varieties, and a Leiden linguist reminds us that language loss takes knowledge with it.
Bridges still need builders. For Metaglossia, interculturation means that communities and professionals decide what “good enough” means.
METAGLOSSIA WEEKEND DIGEST No 004 is out - Metag
lossiaMETAGLOSSIA WEEKEND DIGEST No 004 is out - Metaglossia https://share.google/8Rv3rZ0umprmLNqQW
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"N’Ko : la traduction automatique progresse de 20 % en deux ans, une avancée présentée à l’EMNLP 2026 de Budapest
Mediaguinee Nov 2, 2026
La Conférence Mondiale sur les méthodes empiriques en traitement automatique des langues, (EMNLP 2026) , s’est achevée cette semaine à Budapest, en Hongrie. Elle s’est tenue du 24 au 29 octobre 2026 au HUNGEXPO.
L’évaluation de l’évolution des performances du système de traduction du N’ko (Evaluation of N’ko in Translation Systems) a été l’un des moments forts de la conférence.
Pour rappel, la traduction automatique du N’ko avait été lancée en 2024 avec Google Translate avec des performances encore moyennes :
– N’ko → vers autres langues : 60%
– Autres langues → vers N’ko : 40%
En 2026, grâce à Gemini Advanced Capabilities, le modèle d’intelligence artificielle de Google, les progrès sont spectaculaires :
– N’ko → vers autres langues : performance estimée à 80%
– Autres langues → vers N’ko : efficacité remontée à 60%
Soit une progression de 20 points en deux ans, dans les deux sens.
À noter que le système de traduction de Google couvre aujourd’hui 249 langues dans le monde.
NB : Pour les systèmes de traduction, le N’ko est la forme standard et harmonisée de l’orthographe des langues mandingues. Monsieur Djibrila Diané, guinéen et Secrétaire Général de l’Organisation Mondiale pour le Développement de l’alphabet N’ko, a représenté la communauté des experts et utilisateurs du N’ko à la conférence.
Nafadji Sory Condé, Sociolinguiste, spécialiste des langues africaines et des politiques linguistiques et éducatives"
https://mediaguinee.com/2026/11/nko-la-traduction-automatique-progresse-de-20-en-deux-ans-une-avancee-presentee-a-lemnlp-2026-de-budapest/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Tuoi Tre Startup Award 2026 : une plateforme de traduction par IA décroche le premier prix
02/11/2026 12:17
La finale et la cérémonie de remise des prix du concours "Tuoi Tre Startup Award 2026" se sont déroulées dans la soirée du 31 octobre à Hô Chi Minh-Ville, consacrant le projet Doctranslate.io du prestigieux titre d'"Étoile d’or de la startup", doté d'une prime de 100 millions de dôngs.
L'événement était organisé conjointement par le journal en ligne Tuôi Tre (Jeunesse), la Fédération de la jeunesse du Vietnam de Hô Chi Minh-Ville, l’Alliance internationale pour l’innovation InnoEx et plusieurs partenaires du secteur technologique.
Le projet lauréat a développé une solution de traduction en ligne propulsée par l’intelligence artificielle (IA), capable de traiter des traductions contextuelles, de réaliser la traduction, l'enregistrement, la transcription et d'effectuer des synthèses automatiques pour les conférences et événements internationaux. Prenant actuellement en charge 80 langues et cherchant à intégrer des dialectes plus rares, la jeune pousse réalise déjà 80% de son chiffre d’affaires auprès de partenaires étrangers et ambitionne désormais de consolider sa position sur le marché vietnamien.
Le prix d'"Étoile d’argent", assorti d'une récompense de 50 millions de dôngs, a été attribué à l'entreprise BioWraps pour sa recherche sur les matériaux et les emballages biodégradables conçus à partir de peaux de fruits et de résidus agricoles, une démarche qui s'inscrit pleinement dans l'économie circulaire et prépare une expansion industrielle vers le marché japonais. En outre, deux prix d'encouragement de 10 millions de dôngs chacun ont été décernés aux projets étudiants A-EYE FRUIT, spécialisé dans le contrôle de la qualité agricole, et GEOCARBON, axé sur la quantification du carbone forestier par l'IA, les autres finalistes du top 11 recevant chacun 30 millions de dôngs.
Placée sous le thème de "L’innovation pour la ville du futur", cette septième édition du concours "Tuoi Tre Startup Award 2026" a mis l'accent sur les infrastructures, les transports, la logistique et le développement durable, en évaluant les projets selon des critères rigoureux de l'innovation et des solutions technologiques ; de la viabilité économique et de la pertinence urbaine ; du modèle économique ; de la capacité et de l’exécution de l'équipe ; des compétences de présentation et de la capacité de pensée critique.
À travers ses sept éditions, le concours a rassemblé près de 1 200 candidatures et distingué environ 200 initiatives.
Présent lors de la cérémonie, le Professeur Mai Thanh Phong, recteur de l’Université de la technologie rattachée à l’Université nationale de Hô Chi Minh-Ville, a souligné la signification particulière du thème de ce concours dans un contexte où la métropole s'orientait vers de nouveaux modèles de croissance fondés sur les sciences, les technologies et l'innovation.
Selon lui, une cité de demain ne se résume pas à des infrastructures de pointe ou à des équipements modernes, mais se mesure avant tout à son aptitude à résoudre efficacement les problématiques concrètes, de la circulation et la logistique à l’économie numérique, en passant par l’environnement et le bien-être social.
VNA/CVN"
https://lecourrier.vn/tuoi-tre-startup-award-2026-une-plateforme-de-traduction-par-ia-decroche-le-premier-prix/1358595.html
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Qui était Denise Masson, la traductrice du Coran ?
Surnommée la Dame de Marrakech, Denise Masson, intellectuelle française et catholique engagée, est connue pour sa traduction du Coran. Un parcours étonnant.
« Oubliée par l’histoire de France. » C’est ainsi que Flora Boillot, directrice déléguée de l’Institut français du Maroc, présente Denise Masson (1901-1994). En arrivant à son poste, elle a découvert le destin de cette femme, fervente catholique et islamologue autodidacte, dont la traduction du Coran fait toujours référence.
« Il est vrai qu’habituellement on s’attache assez peu au traducteur, poursuit Flora Boillot, mais en l’occurrence il s’agit de l’un des plus grands textes sacrés. Il est assez étonnant que le nom de Denise Masson soit tombé dans l’oubli. »
Grandir entre Rodin et Poulenc
Celle qui a traversé le XXe siècle est « née à Paris, dans un milieu bourgeois, intellectuel et féru d’art », raconte Kamal Moueddene, responsable de la Maison Denise-Masson. Son père, Maurice, dont elle est restée très proche, est un mécène éclairé qui a constitué une incroyable collection de toiles impressionnistes. « Il connaissait personnellement Auguste Rodin, et Francis Poulenc était un ami de la famille. »
Sa mère, Mélanie Passemard, lui transmet la passion du piano. La famille possède aussi un vignoble près d’Alger, où la petite fille effectue de longs séjours..."
Par Flore Pierson
Publié le 29/10/2026 à 14h00, mis à jour le 29/10/2026 à 14h00 •
https://www.lavie.fr/idees/histoire/qui-etait-denise-masson-la-traductrice-du-coran-105885.php
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
New Journal on Translation Brings a Wide Range of Indian Languages to a New Readership
'Hyphen' is handsomely produced and illustrated, with a design that gives the contents the heft of a literary journal.
Hyphen issue 1. Photo: Author provided.
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What is the role of the humble hyphen? That small punctuation mark punches above its weight by connecting what would otherwise stay apart. It creates meaning from the space in between. This is the animating idea behind Hyphen, (the-hyphen.in) a new quarterly journal of translation founded and published by Vivek Shanbhag and edited by Deepa Ganesh. The name, aptly, is inspired by A.K. Ramanujan’s description of himself as the hyphen in “Indian-American.”The journal aims to move between “tongues, places, memories and ways of seeing”, and the first issue is an ambitious introduction to the project. It comprises fiction and non-fiction featuring 17 writers and 11 translators, with work in seven languages. The language in focus for this issue is Marathi.
Books
With Books Held High, College Street Walks in Kolkata
Hyphen is handsomely produced and illustrated, with a design that gives the contents the heft of a literary journal. In this way, it contributes to the necessary project of translation as an intellectual practice in its own right.The fiction in the inaugural issue is almost a who’s who of contemporary writing in Indian languages. These include stories by Benyamin, translated from Malayalam by J. Devika; Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Ganesh; and Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Iswarya V.Advertisement
In his essay on Marathi literature, Rajeev Naik stresses that such writing refuses to stay static. Writers have always experimented with genres, styles and ideas in response to social and cultural circumstances. This is not a simple rejection of tradition. Modern Marathi literature, Naik writes, is entangled in its own history even as it departs from it. The relationship is like a hyphen itself: two things retaining their identities while producing something new in their partnership.The story ‘Indulkar’ by Kiran Gurav in the issue, translated by Shanta Gokhale, can be seen as an example of this. Here, the protagonist moves through the worlds of government employment, home and family, as well as his dreams. The story’s postmodernism draws on a traditional Marathi narrative: it exists in a network of relationships between individual and society, reality and fiction, inherited and new forms.Advertisement
The same point, though in a different context, is made by Adivasi writer Parvati Tirkey, in an interview with Sundar Sarukkai while referring to the oral tradition and writing: “Creativity emerges from the moment, from work, from the surrounding world. No single individual owns the song. The next time someone sings it, the song changes slightly; many people carry it forward together. Literature, in this sense, is created collectively by the community.”This sense of literature as a meeting place also acquires political and social weight in Pradnya Daya Pawar’s ‘A Diamond Is Forever,’ translated by Jerry Pinto. The essay, a tribute to Pawar’s mother Hira Pawar, is a portrait of a Dalit woman whose life was shaped by caste discrimination, poverty, feminism and Ambedkarite ideals. Hira Pawar emerges as rebellious and committed, but not without her own contradictions and imperfections. A woman’s private struggle becomes part of a larger social history.Advertisement
A similar mix of the personal and the political appears in Chandrashekhar Phansalkar’s translations of the Marathi poet Narayan Surve on his centenary. These poems reveal, in Phansalkar’s phrase, “a rare combination of tenderness and political consciousness.”Advertisement
In this way, the pieces in Hyphen resist the impulse to put literature into closed boxes: artistic or political, personal or historical, traditional or experimental.Another revealing exploration of this space can be found in an essay born of a conversation between the poet A. R. Venkatachalapathy and the musician Rithvik Raja. They begin with the question: What does it mean to translate a Tamil poem into English? This expands into something larger. For them, translation is not just carrying meaning across languages; it is an attempt to communicate with another time, standing between worlds separated by more than words.Harish Trivedi’s expansive essay, ‘The Making of Modern Hindi,’ extends the argument from individual works to language itself. The Hindi that is seen as a stable linguistic form, Trivedi writes, is instead a product of historical and political transformations. Much of what we think of as traditional Hindi literature was written in Awadhi and Braj. From the late 19th century onwards, Khadi Boli increasingly became the basis of Standard Hindi, accompanied by efforts to standardise spelling, vocabulary and grammar.Thus, languages, like literary traditions, are made rather than inherited intact. They evolve through contact with power and circumstance. Hyphens again: between old and new forms, between region and centre, between literature and politics.It’s worth pointing out that every piece in Hyphen arrives in English from other languages. As a link language this is understandable, even necessary: it is how a Malayalam writer, a Marathi poet and a Hindi scholar can all be read by a common audience. But the hyphen here joins each language to English more firmly than it joins them to one another.It will be interesting to see whether later issues find ways, perhaps through some form of bilingual presentation or translators’ notes, to widen the circle. That would make Hyphen fully live up to its credo of creating the conditions “for listening across linguistic and cultural boundaries, fostering dialogue, empathy, and a richer understanding of one another”.
Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer.. "
Sanjay Sipahimalani
Oct 27 2026
https://m.thewire.in/culture/a-new-journal-on-translation-brings-a-wide-range-of-indian-languages-to-a-new-readership
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Council fails to pay 200 interpreters for more than three months
insidecroydon
CROYDON IN CRISIS: A ‘collapsed’ payments system has seen the council stiff hundreds of casual workers – highly trained translators and interpreters – for tens of thousands of pounds. And Mayor Perry knew nothing about it.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Mayor Jason Perry’s omnishambles council could find itself dragged through the small claims court by dozens of angry service providers because a faulty payments system has failed to make payments to around 200 freelance translators and interpreters for three months.
The council’s total debts to the hard-working suppliers is estimated to be tens of thousands of pounds.
It has emerged that Croydon Council’s internal payment system collapsed overnight at the end of July. Three months on, the translators are still waiting for their money and “pulling our hair out over the lack of communication”.
CTIS – the Croydon Translation and Interpretation Service – has ground to a halt, with important meetings with often vulnerable clients having to be cancelled due to non-payment of fees. CTIS personnel have been left out of pocket for amounts from a few hundred to several thousand pounds.
Despite numerous complaints from the translators and various assurances from senior council managers, a payment deadline of this week has come and gone with no money paid by Croydon’s cash-strapped council.
The situation has also highlighted that the council has no system in place to make emergency payments to its casual workers when its computerised payments system breaks down.
And Inside Croydon has established that Jason Perry had no idea whatsoever about the chaotic situation at council headquarters, prompting one Town Hall opposition figure to urge the Tory Mayor to “get a grip”.
This latest shambles of council incompetence follows the discovery that Perry’s council is sitting on £8million of overpaid Council Tax, which it has failed to refund to 30,000 households across the borough.
The 200 members of the CTIS team provide translation services across around 75 languages and dialects, plus British Sign Language and deaf-blind support. Day-to-day demand is heavy across Arabic, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish and Ukrainian, Urdu, Farsi, Tamil and Pashto.
CTIS mainly covers high-stakes social care, safeguarding and child protection cases. CTIS, which has operated for more than 30 years, also organises languages support for Bromley Council, Wandsworth Schools, and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust.
Break down: a new payment system at the council HQ broke down in July and has not yet been fixed
In Croydon, its freelancers provide vitally important support to allow the council’s full-time staff to do their jobs, and is especially necessary in a borough where the Home Office has one of its largest immigration control centres in the town centre, at Ruskin Square.
The translators work in face-to-face meetings at Fisher’s Folly and via conference calls and video calls across children’s and adult social care, early help services, schools, mental health assessments and family court hearings.
“The impact on residents who need linguistic support is grim,” according to one regular translator, who asked not to be identified in this report.
“When I had to pull out of bookings recently, vital legal meetings — including pre-proceedings child protection meetings — could simply not go ahead.
“I’m not sure social workers understand why interpreters haven’t been available lately, or whether they just assume people aren’t turning up for their bookings.”
Of the unpaid fees, the translator said, “While a few hundred pounds might sound small to council bosses, it hits self-employed household budgets hard in the current economic climate.”
With the council’s computers malfunctioning since July, the translators asked if emergency hardship payments, in lieu of invoices being settled, were a possibility.
“It’s bewildering that they didn’t set them up immediately.”
The translators appear to have been caught in the cross-fire of a turf war at Fisher’s Folly. In one email, David Wheeler, the council’s business and service compliance operations manager, wrote: “The delay has been caused by central processes that we are currently negotiating with the accounts payable team and governance…
“We do not agree with their position.”
Said the translator: “Hearing that CTIS and central accounts/governance are actively arguing while workers go unpaid is alarming.” Some of the workers have become concerned about whether they will ever get paid and whether the bankrupt borough has run out of money once again.
“Without straight answers from the top, the situation has become ridiculous.”
To make a bad situation worse, in one chain of emails, a senior council official broke all kinds of data protection laws by sending out a mass email – with every address clearly seen in the cc field.
At the end of September, Simon Robson, Croydon’s director of operations for adult social care, wrote from his office on the second floor of Fisher’s Folly “to apologise unreservedly… for the delay in recent payments to you”.
No idea: cabinet member responsible Yvette Hopley
Robson’s email continued: “As David Wheeler has advised you, we have moved to a new system that supports all things CTIS but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances the payment processes became delayed – hence the issue that has arisen in the last few weeks.
“We have been working extremely hard with our new provider to ensure that this issue is managed as quickly as possible – please be aware it is not the provider’s fault – so moving forward the payments process will return to the timescales you have been used to over many years.”
Another month later, the problems have still yet to be fixed.
“Since colleagues can no longer afford their bills, many of us have stopped accepting bookings,” the translator told Inside Croydon.
“That means essential meetings are actively being cancelled or postponed, leaving vulnerable non-English speakers stranded without professional support.
“The failure sits squarely with finance and accounts, yet nobody higher up is taking proper ownership.”
And they add: “Communication from the council has been pretty dismal.
“We keep getting fobbed off with vague lines about holding on and how ‘every effort is being made’.”
Several translators say that they have repeatedly been asked to re-invoice for unpaid amounts, and issued with multiple purchase orders for the same booking.
Some are contemplating taking the council to the small claims court, a quick and inexpensive way of appearing before an independent judge, who can order payments to be made, plus costs. It would represent an ignominious new low for the basket-case council.
Alarmed: Cllr Stuart King
Councillor Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, has written to Mayor Perry over what he described as “an alarming situation”. According to King, neither the Mayor nor Yvette Hopley, the Sanderstead councillor who serves as cabinet member for health and adult social care, had been made aware of the situation by council bosses.
King wants emergency payments to be made to all affected interpreters, and for outstanding payments to be made within a week.
Mayor Perry has failed to reply to King’s urgent email.
Today, Councillor King told Inside Croydon: “It is shocking that the council has treated its own interpreters in this way.
“More alarming still is that neither Mayor Jason Perry nor his cabinet member was aware of the situation until I brought it to their attention.
“This raises serious questions about how the council is being managed, how information is being communicated to those in charge, and whether basic oversight is being exercised.
“It is further evidence of the serious organisational problems within Croydon Council and raises fundamental questions about the Mayor’s grip on the organisation he is responsible for leading.”
Jason Perry is paid £86,000 per year as Mayor of Croydon."
https://insidecroydon.com/2026/10/30/council-fails-to-pay-200-interpreters-for-more-than-three-months/amp/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Finding online information in your own language is an empowering experience, but a language must be consistent to maximize its effectiveness. Without uniform spelling rules and established grammar, meanings vary too much to be useful
"Haitian Creole in the digital age
How digital advancements are transforming the accessibility and usage of Haitian Creole.
Editor’s note: In recognition of International Creole Day, observed annually on Oct. 28, The Haitian Times is republishing this story, originally published on May 29, 2024, exploring the place of Haitian Creole in the digital age. As technology continues to shape how we communicate, the preservation and accessibility of Haitian Creole remain important conversations. We revisit this piece as part of our ongoing coverage of the language’s cultural significance, evolution and future.
As Haiti confronts ongoing crises, Haitian Heritage Month emerges as a powerful reminder of the enduring elements of our culture that we continue to celebrate. Among these, Haitian Creole stands as a beacon of resilience and cultural identity. This month offers a unique opportunity to honor and promote our heritage, particularly through the advancement of our language. As we explore the digital advancements that have transformed the accessibility and usage of Haitian Creole, we see how technology not only preserves but also amplifies our cultural expression on a global scale.
The digital realm has become a key frontier in this cultural promotion. If it seems that you have recently encountered more well-crafted, grammatically correct Haitian Creole in online platforms, you are not mistaken. Although Haitian Creole was declared as one of the two official languages of Haiti in 1987, standard French is still prevalent in formal discourse in Haiti, especially in financial and legal proceedings. All of this is changing with the advancement of digital media. With its inclusion in the language menu of Google Translate and a fully localized interface in Facebook, Haitian Creole has made significant strides in the digital realm over the past years. Amidst rising globalization and worldwide migration streams, access to languages of limited diffusion, i.e. those outside of the traditional set of frequently encountered languages, has become ever more important. Haitian Creole is spoken by 12 million people worldwide and is the third most common language in Florida. Even so, the recent linguistic advances didn’t just happen on their own.
The traditional stereotype of a translator as a bookish person working with a paper dictionary no longer holds true. Modern translators make use of advanced, interconnected software to conduct their research online. Entire teams of trained linguists – based in the U.S. and Haiti – collaborate to prepare and edit translations from English into Haitian Creole. Although news reports about the breakthroughs of AI appear to suggest otherwise, machines alone are not capable of producing fully accurate translations. While major languages such as those spoken at the UN have extensive corpora based on dictionaries and centuries of published materials, Haitian Creole, which has been a predominantly spoken language in the past, cannot rely on comparable resources. Artificial intelligence (AI) engines must be fed relevant information before they can begin the work of learning from it, and in the case of our language, they can only draw on limited data. Before an online tool such as Google Translate can produce basic phrases in Creole, translators must therefore pour over long vocabulary lists to confirm equivalencies. As you will surely have noticed, such tools struggle to translate complex texts that include special professional terms or slang.
The expansion of Haitian Creole in the digital age results from the confluence of multiple historical, legal, and economic factors. The devastating earthquake of 2010 in Haiti led to a spike in demand for language services, as international aid organizations scrambled to provide local assistance in Haiti and realized that materials offered exclusively in French did not always meet the needs of the local population. At the same time, the growing number of new immigrants to the United States who speak a primary language other than English has compelled government agencies at all levels to offer professionally translated versions of civic content. For example, the State of New York approved a sweeping language access law in 2022 that mandates translating the content of state publications into 12 different languages spoken in the state, as determined by census data. One of these languages is Haitian Creole. Haitians who settle in the U.S. are also a powerful economic force – as students, employees, and consumers. Consequently, businesses have shown an increasing interest in producing content such as employee manuals, lease agreements, or vocational instructions in Haitian Creole. This boom in demand for language services in turn has created new job opportunities for educated bilingual speakers who can help cross the linguistic divide as translators (who write texts) or interpreters (who offer spoken services, for example in courts or hospitals).
Finding online information in your own language is an empowering experience, but a language must be consistent to maximize its effectiveness. Without uniform spelling rules and established grammar, meanings vary too much to be useful. There have been extensive efforts to standardize the usage rules for Haitian Creole, led by the Haitian Creole Academy and other language advocates. The booming demand for translated content has not only driven this harmonization further but has also helped define new Haitian Creole words for modern concepts, for example the names of the omnipresent emojis in social media. In the course of this process, Haitian Creole has attained a different level of significance. While educated speakers tended to emphasize their knowledge of French in formal encounters in the past, modern Haitians perceive Haitian Creole as a powerful means to unite their community and to celebrate their culture. Although the translation industry helps to elevate and preserve our rich linguistic heritage, it is up to individual Haitians to contribute to this trend."
by Marleen Julien
Oct. 28, 2026
https://haitiantimes.com/2026/10/28/haitian-creole-digital-age/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Artificial intelligence is changing translation education, not only because it can translate texts, but also because it is changing the way students learn, instructors assess their work and universities understand academic honesty. With tools such as ChatGPT becoming increasingly capable of producing fluent translations, an important question comes to mind: How can we prepare future translators to use AI effectively without losing the skills, judgment and responsibility that make them professionals?
Not every student has the same access to AI
Another important issue discussed in the chapter is digital inequality. It is easy to assume that all students have equal opportunities to use modern technology, but this is not always the case.
Some students can afford paid subscriptions to advanced AI and translation tools, while others depend on free versions with fewer features. Some have reliable internet connections and suitable computers, while others face financial or technical difficulties. Access may also be affected by geographical restrictions and local regulations.
These differences can influence academic performance. If an assignment allows students to use advanced AI tools, those who have access to better technology may enjoy an advantage over classmates who cannot afford it. The result may be an assessment that measures not only translation competence, but also a student’s financial resources and technological opportunities.
This raises a question of fairness. How can a university compare the performance of students who have worked with different levels of technological support?
One possible response is to ensure that students have equal access to the tools required for a particular assignment. Another is to design assessment tasks that make the student’s own knowledge and decision-making visible, rather than allowing the quality of the final text to depend mainly on the technology available.
Fairness in the AI era does not mean giving every student exactly the same tool in every situation. It means making sure that differences in access do not unfairly determine educational results.
Can instructors know whether a student used AI?
Transparency is another major challenge. Universities may require students to disclose whether they have used AI, but such rules are not always easy to enforce. Some students may be reluctant to admit using these tools, even when their use is permitted under certain conditions.
Instructors may turn to AI-detection software in an attempt to identify machine-generated work. However, the chapter discusses the limitations of relying on detection and the risk that decisions may be influenced by suspicion rather than reliable evidence. A student’s writing may be wrongly questioned, while the use of AI in another assignment may go unnoticed.
This creates a difficult situation for both students and instructors. If the institution depends too heavily on detection, assessment can become a contest in which students try to conceal their use of AI and instructors try to discover it. Such an approach does little to encourage honest learning.
A more constructive solution is to make the translation process part of the assessment. Students can be asked to explain the difficulties they encountered, identify the changes they made to an AI-generated draft and justify their translation choices. They may also be required to provide the prompts they used, the machine’s initial output and a record of their revisions.
These measures would help instructors understand not only what the student submitted, but also how the final translation was produced. They would encourage students to take responsibility for their decisions and make their own contribution clearer.
The purpose should not be to catch students out. It should be to create an educational environment in which honest use of technology is possible and the student’s real learning can be assessed.
When AI reproduces human bias
The ethical questions about AI are not only about academic honesty. They are also about the language, values and ideas that AI systems may repeat in their translations.
AI systems learn from large amounts of existing texts and other data. If these materials contain stereotypes or unfair views, AI may repeat them in its translations. This can affect how people, cultures, men and women, and different social groups are presented in another language.
For example, a translation may use words that support a stereotype or present a certain group in an unfair way. This problem may not be easy to notice, especially when the translation is grammatically correct and sounds natural.
This is especially important when translating sensitive texts about identity, politics, culture or social relations. A translator must not only check whether the words are correct, but also whether the translation gives the meaning of the original without adding unfair or harmful ideas.
The problem becomes more difficult when we cannot clearly understand how an AI system reaches its results. If an AI translation contains biased or discriminatory language, who is responsible? Is it the developers who designed the system, the institution that uses it or the translator who accepts its output?
More than one party may be involved, but this does not remove the translator’s responsibility to check the final text. The chapter, therefore, stresses the importance of teaching students how to recognise bias, question the ideas behind AI-generated language and understand the possible results of their translation choices.
Teaching students to think, not just use technology
One important idea in the chapter is that translation education should not only teach students which tools to use and how to use them. Students also need to understand when a tool is suitable, when its results should be questioned and what may happen if they accept its suggestions without checking them.
This requires what the authors call digital reflexivity. In simple words, it means thinking carefully about how we use technology and examining our own decisions when working with it.
A student should not accept an AI translation simply because it sounds good. The student should compare it with the original text, check important information and terminology, and consider whether the machine has understood the context correctly. Students should also know that AI can give answers that sound convincing but may be wrong or have no clear support.
Instructors can develop these skills through practical classroom activities. They can ask students to compare different AI translations, find possible bias, identify mistakes and explain why they accepted or rejected certain suggestions. Students can also write short comments explaining their choices and the reasons behind them.
These activities would make ethics a practical part of translation training instead of a subject discussed only in theory. They would also help students understand that professional translation is not only about producing a fluent text. It also requires good judgment, an understanding of the reader and responsibility for the meaning of the message.
The difference between academic and professional ethics
The chapter also discusses the relationship between ethical behaviour at university and ethical behaviour in professional translation. The two are closely connected, but they are not always the same.
At university, students may be asked to explain when and how they use AI so that instructors can assess their work fairly. In professional translation, however, the rules for using translation technology may depend on the agreement with the client, the type of work and the need to protect confidential information.
A professional translator may use a dictionary or a translation tool without mentioning every resource used. But AI can raise additional questions, especially when the work contains confidential documents or sensitive information. The translator must consider whether the tool is suitable and whether sending information to an external system could put the client’s data at risk.
Students, therefore, need to understand the difference between using AI as a learning tool and using it to provide a professional service. They should also learn how to explain their decisions when questions arise about the quality, accuracy or ethical side of their work.
This is an important responsibility for universities. They should prepare students not only to pass their examinations, but also to deal with the real ethical problems they may face after graduation.
Rethinking the way translation is assessed
Perhaps the most important point in the chapter is that universities need to reconsider how they assess translation skills in the age of AI.
If instructors look only at the final translation, it may become more difficult to know what a student can really do. A well-written text does not always mean that the student understands the original, can identify mistakes or knows how to make the right translation decisions.
The authors suggest giving more attention to the process of translation, not only to the final result. Instead of asking for a completed translation alone, instructors can ask students to record the steps they followed, explain how they used AI and give reasons for their changes. Short learning journals, translation comments and self-assessment activities can help instructors understand how students reached their final results.
Universities can also combine assignments that allow the use of AI with classroom exercises or examinations where students must show their skills without it. In this way, instructors can assess both traditional translation skills and the ability to use modern technology critically.
These changes would make assessment closer to the needs of professional translation. In the translation industry, knowing how to use AI is becoming more useful, but knowing how to check its results is still essential.
The aim is not to return to a world without technology. It is to make sure that technology helps students learn instead of doing the learning for them.
A more responsible future for translation education
The discussion by Bo Li and Yuan Liu reminds us that AI is developing faster than many educational policies and ethical rules. Universities, instructors and students are still learning how to deal with tools that can perform tasks once seen mainly as human language skills.
There is no single rule that can solve every problem. A rule suitable for a simple classroom exercise may not be suitable for a final-year research project. In the same way, the rules for using AI in a translation examination may be different from those for professional work for a client.
What is needed is a clear framework that explains how AI can be used, protects academic honesty, deals with differences in access to technology and encourages students to think carefully about the tools they use. Ethical questions should be discussed openly, and students should have opportunities to practise making responsible decisions before they start their professional careers.
Translation education must also recognize that technology does not remove the need for human responsibility. In fact, as AI becomes better at producing translations that sound convincing, critical thinking becomes even more important. Students need to learn not only how to get an answer from a machine, but also how to decide whether that answer can be trusted.
The responsibility remains human
Chapter 10 presents an important view of the future of translation education. The main question is not simply whether AI should be allowed in the classroom, but how universities can prepare students to use it honestly, fairly and responsibly.
AI can support translation practice, help students consider different ways of translating and provide useful help during learning. However, it can also create problems related to academic honesty, unequal access, hidden bias and questions about who is responsible for the final text.
The answer is neither to accept every new technology without thinking nor to reject it because of fear. The better way is to develop clear rules, effective teaching methods and a stronger sense of professional responsibility.
For translation instructors, this means helping students become more than good users of AI. They should become critical thinkers who understand the limits of technology, can explain their decisions and take responsibility for their work.
Future translators will need technological knowledge, language skills and cultural awareness. But these qualities will not be enough without ethical judgment.
AI may change the way a translation is produced. It should not change our understanding of honesty, fairness and responsibility. These principles must remain at the heart of translation education, even as the tools continue to develop.
Dr Mahmoud Kamel
Professor at the Academy of Arts
https://egyptian-gazette.com/op-ed/when-ai-enters-the-translation-classroom-the-ethical-questions-we-cannot-ignore-2-2/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"Mining parallel sentences from archival grammars and dictionaries is a very different route to low-resource MT than paraphrasing a question into dozens of rewrites, and that contrast matters here. One paper builds a pipeline for bitext extraction from documentation materials so languages with almost no web presence can still contribute training data; the other studies uncertainty quantification in question answering, using quality-diversity search to generate controlled input perturbations and measure how unstable a model’s answer becomes.
Mobilizing the Archive: Bitext Extraction at Scale from Archival Documents for Extremely Low-resource Languages
Mine archival grammars and dictionaries for bitext, because an OCR-plus-VLM pipeline extracts usable parallel data for 20 languages and gives low-resource MT up to +15.78 chrF2++ in-context.
While mining parallel sentences from web pages has proven effective for low-resource machine translation, the majority of the world's languages have little to no web presence. What they do have, though, are resources that are the result of centuries of efforts by linguists, such as grammars, dictionaries, and other documentation materials. We propose extracting translation examples from such linguistic resources, which offer parallel data for languages under-represented online and could potentially scale to thousands more languages. We develop a pipeline to achieve this, leveraging an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) model as well as a vision language model (VLM), to ensure identified content to be aligned with visual layout information. We demonstrate the utility of the extracted bitexts for bootstrapping translation systems across 20 languages, both by training machine translation models and by applying in-context learning for large language models. For in-context learning, we observe improvements of +15.78 and +6.94 chrF2++ over zero-shot translation for into low- and high-resource languages, respectively.
Neighborhood Elites: Quality-Diversity Search for Uncertainty Quantification in Question Answering
Neighborhood-elites uncertainty sampling is a QA method, but its controlled rewrite space matters for MT evaluation because it separates answer-preserving perturbations by edit type and support explicitness.
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly capable, yet they produce wrong answers indistinguishable from correct ones. In question answering (QA), such an error propagates unnoticed into downstream tasks. Perturbation-based uncertainty quantification (UQ) addresses this by probing a model over a set of input rewrites and reading uncertainty from how much its predictions vary. Yet this set is usually built generically, by free paraphrasing, token-level perturbation, or adversarial search. Such rewrites leave two things uncontrolled that matter in QA: what kind of change is made to the context, and how explicitly the context supports the answer. When neither is controlled, the composition of the set is determined by the generator rather than by design, and the estimate inherits whatever that generator happens to produce. Quality-diversity (QD) search is built to cover a predefined exploration space, so we recast input perturbation as a QD problem and propose neighborhood elites (NE), a neighborhood constructor that spreads answer-preserving rewrites across two axes, the kind of edit and the explicitness of support. We compare NE against three other neighborhood constructors, holding the editor, QA model, uncertainty measure and search objective fixed, and against three scores read from the original context. Across five extractive-QA datasets and five instruction-tuned LLMs, NE improves failure detection against every other constructor in at least 24 of the 25 dataset-model pairs, reaching 0.726 AUROC and 0.211 AUPRC lift over the base rate. Additionally, NE detects failure better than semantic entropy computed over decoder samples, by 0.074 AUROC and 0.062 AUPRC lift, and this advantage widens as the neighborhood grows.
Papers announced by arXiv on Thursday, 29 October 2026, covering submissions from 28 October to 29 October 2026"
October 30, 2026
Machine Translation Digest for Oct 29 2026
https://buttondown.com/daily-mt-picks/archive/machine-translation-digest-for-oct-29-2026/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
A translator must first understand the poet’s intellectual and emotional world and fully absorb the thoughts expressed in the original text
"Understanding author’s thoughts, emotions crucial in translation, says former Chief Justice
Taking part in the book release of Telugu translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, N.V. Ramana says the hallmark of a good translator is the ability to present great literature in simple and accessible language without losing its literary essence
The Hindu Bureau
Former Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana emphasised that understanding the original author’s thoughts, emotions and deeper meaning is essential when translating literary works from one language into another.
He observed that translation was not merely about replacing words with their equivalents in another language, but about conveying the poet’s heart, ideas and experiences to readers. According to him, the hallmark of a good translator is the ability to present great literature in simple and accessible language without losing its literary essence.
He was speaking after unveiling the Telugu translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s internationally-acclaimed literary masterpiece Gitanjali by P. Krishnaiah, Chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board and former IAS officer. The book was released at a programme organised by Emesco Publishers in Vijayawada on Saturday evening.
Describing Gitanjali as a distinguished work in world literature, Justice Ramana said bringing such a literary masterpiece into another language was no ordinary task. He pointed out that every word in poetry carries a distinct meaning and deeper emotional significance, and translations that fail to capture these nuances cannot do justice to the original work. “A translator must first understand the poet’s intellectual and emotional world and fully absorb the thoughts expressed in the original text,” he said, and appreciated Mr. Krishnaiah for successfully undertaking the responsibility.
He also highlighted the importance of literary and cultural programmes, stating that such initiatives and publications would contribute significantly to the development and promotion of the Telugu language.
Mr. Krishnaiah, through his Telugu translation of Gitanjali, has sought to bring Tagore’s rich literary and philosophical expressions closer to Telugu readers. Particular attention has been given to using simple language while preserving the poetic beauty and literary values of the original work.
Former Andhra Pradesh Minister and former MLA Mandali Buddhaprasad said translations played a vital role in preserving and promoting Telugu language and literature. He appreciated efforts to make internationally-acclaimed literary works accessible to readers in their mother tongue.
Former Minister Dokka Manikya Varaprasad observed that literature was a powerful medium for imparting knowledge and encouraging critical thinking in society. He said such publications helped introduce future generations to the richness of literary heritage.
Emesco Publishers chairman Vijay Kumar said the organisation was committed to making quality literary works accessible to readers and would continue its efforts to introduce world-renowned literature to Telugu audiences.
Literary enthusiasts, educationists and several prominent personalities attended the programme.
Published - October 31, 2026 10:23 pm IST - VIJAYAWADA"
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/understanding-authors-thoughts-emotions-crucial-in-translation-says-former-chief-justice/article71650286.ece
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"How about if everybody spoke English and then we could hire more doctors and fewer translators in our country?”
"JD Vance labeled 'breathtakingly unlikable' for complaining about translators working in the ER
The Vice President made some controversial comments about hospitals employing too many translators, and said that everyone should just be able to speak English
US Vice President JD Vance made the comments during a town hall event for Fox News
Vice President J.D. Vance has been called “disingenuous” for complaining about too many translators in the emergency room during his visit to the hospital with his son.
Speaking at a town hall event broadcast by Fox News, Vance said he visited the emergency room for one of his children recently, adding that it was “all totally fine” and just “young parents being panicky”.
“And I’m sitting in the emergency room, and there are like nine different translators for nine different languages while I’m worried about a medical problem that my son has, and I’m just thinking to myself — how about if everybody spoke English and then we could hire more doctors and fewer translators in our country,” Vance said, to a reaction of cheers from the studio audience...
Bulwark journalist Tim Miller also chimed in, adding, “In this story JD shares that he panicked & took his kid to the emergency room when he was totally fine. Instead of being relieved by that good news, he got upset that there are translators in the hospital helping the sick. This must’ve been before he was Catholic.”
Vance, whose parents-in-law are Indian-born, has faced stark criticism for his comments regarding other cultures recently. The Vice President was also branded a "pathetic embarrassment of a son-in-law" following remarks at a Montana rally earlier in October, where he claimed he "couldn't even pronounce" names and countries in the Middle East and Asia.
Vance was unhappy with the number of translators in the emergency room
"I remember driving to a local gas station to wait hours in line for gasoline that was now, of course, more expensive because of a region of the world made up of countries and names that I cannot even pronounce," he told the hushed venue.
Responding to Vance’s words, journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote on X, "JD Vance's in-laws' names are Radhakrishna Chilukuri and Lakshmi Chilukuri. I wonder if he tells them this stuff, too. To their faces. Or does he just save it for white MAGA rallies? Truly a racist, pathetic embarrassment of a son-in-law to his brown Indian immigrant in-laws.”
Immigration has remained a central pillar of the Trump administration, with deportations and detentions climbing sharply over the past year since he came back into power in 2025."
Hannah Broughton
10:16 ET, 30 Oct 2026
https://www.irishstar.com/news/politics/jd-vance-labeled-breathtakingly-unlikable-37827356
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
As part of our Phoenix Poets series, we have the privilege of publishing amazing works of translated poetry. This season, we have a new bilingual Romanian and English edition of Radu Vancu’s The Rope in Bloom, translated by Paula and Cyrus Console-Șoican. This edition of Vancu’s celebrated and devastating 2012 collection marks the full-length English translation of his work. To get to know the collection and the process behind it, bringing it into English, we spoke with Paula and Cyrus Console-Șoican, and here they share about getting to know the world of Radu Vancu, about poetry and translation in the age of AI, and about the regional linguistic quirks they encountered along the way.
Tell us a little about yourself and your relationship to poetry.
We met in a shared office in the English Department (Kansas University) in 2008; Cyrus, guessing correctly that Paula spoke French, pretended to be having trouble with some lines of Astruc’s “Olympia, la fille des îles.”
What made you excited to work with translating this poet’s work?
The excellence of his book—although there are other reasons for excitement about Vancu. He is a central figure in the poetry community of Romania and beyond: public intellectual, editor of leading Romanian critical journal Transilvania, translator of Pound and Whitman, former president of PEN Romania, organizer of one of the country’s best poetry festivals (Poets In Transylvania, which each year brings writers from all over the world to Sibiu for several days of readings and colloquy). Vancu is a poet for whom poetry means integration into a whole sphere of life—social, political, familial—so that to come to know his work is also to feel you’ve entered the community of people and ideas on which the production of a vital national poetry depends.
Above all, though, we were excited about The Rope In Bloom. It’s an amazing book—the kind of poem that enlarges your model of the human condition even as it reaffirms your solidarity with it. Its themes are among those that exert almost universal fascination: suicide, love, addiction, life after death. The Rope In Bloom tells the story of one generation of a family torn apart by loss, even as the next generation of that family comes into joyous being; the poem’s first person is father to the young family, bereaved to the old. This story spoke intimately to us, who had our own fairly young children with us when we first read Vancu’s poem. We were susceptible to the complex emotion it unforgettably portrays: the crushing love and tenderness (and speechless gratitude) of the young parent, a feeling backed darkly by dread & terror of what might now be taken away.
To us, this mingling of hope with desperation felt timeless but also historically specific. We had both lived through periods of national exuberance—the Romania of the ‘89 revolution; the US of the later 90s when its middle class felt prosperous and destined for a limitless future. We translated the poem during what felt like a generational upheaval of this order. In 1997, the year Vancu discovered his father hanging in the family home, Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out the vision of a “benign” global American domination stretching indefinitely into the future; by the time our translation went to press, criminal wars had broken out, escalated, and metastasized from the key “geopolitical pivots” Ukraine and Iran on which Brzezinski’s formula was to depend. Europe was burning. Global surface temperature had blown irrecoverably past the 1.5º limit set by the Paris Agreement, which now seemed like the final exhalation of that optimistic former life.
Translating Rope In Bloom together, often with the children in the next room, gave us the feeling of being brought not only into the ambit of Vancu’s own family or familial personae, but also into a larger collective of Romanian poets and intellectuals working together in service of the true statement—this was a source of excitement and, in the deepest sense, recreation to us.
How would you describe the significance or role of literary translation today?
Maybe the only thing we can say is that literary translation’s significance is suffering profound, rapid change. Large language models produce excellent, sometimes stunningly creative literary translations without apparent time or effort. (We note here, without sanctimony, our commitment to translating without AI assistance. Given the trend toward compulsory AI—the fact that already you can’t look up the meaning of a word or phrase, let alone write an email or text to someone, without receiving suggestions from a machine intelligence—this may require restricting our reference process to dictionaries and other books.)
Why shouldn’t we use AI to translate? We expect it to upend (among many other systems) the entire literary value system. In the world to come it’s conceivable that “handmade” poetry might take on new relevance and cultural weight, but not as an absolute benchmark of literary excellence (we might look to AI for that, just as those interested in absolute excellence in chess look to Stockfish or TCEC—totally legitimate and exciting interests, Cyrus says). Instead, handmade poetry might gain value as a document and register of specific, individual human voices and subjectivities. It’s possible that literary translation will enjoy a similar promotion in status. The practice will remain extremely interesting as a document of one human mind encountering another; people like us will be committed to it because it advances our own literary intelligence and literary relationships. Our own priorities as writers and translators seem to be migrating toward exploration/development/expression of this register, and toward correspondence with a small number of other reader/writers—maybe above all between ourselves.
Tell us a little about your process for translating poetry—are there aspects of the original rhythm or voice you focus on preserving, is there a particular routine or practice you work with, or are there any rules you set for yourself?
Paula writes a detailed literal gloss or trot, which Cyrus then versifies (in the sense of establishing the line as a unit of measure—not in the sense of applying a fixed meter, not for this poem anyway).
Both steps cause infinite problems; the third and longest stage of our process demands lengthy, face-to-face argument of as many potential solutions as one or the other can propose. These discussions most often take place at a table in a cafe. Much of The Rope in Bloom was hammered out at Tucano (Piața Unirii), Harmony (Blvd. Copou), Crows (51st St), and Front Range (Gregory Blvd).
We don’t take avoidable liberties with the denotative content of the original, but decisions about how to put things must serve the goal of producing a poem in English. We want to find the most precise transformation of a Romanian poem into an English one.
What’s something surprising you learned about a language during the translation process?
It’s not surprising for a language to exhibit regional variation around plant and animal names, but it shocked us all the same to hear Vancu use mămăruță instead of buburuză to refer to a ladybird beetle.
Do you see your work in a conversation with a community/communities of other translators or poets?
There are a number of Romanian–English translators we’d like to think of ourselves as working among—Sean Cotter (his version of our other favorite volume of Vancu, Kaddish, now out from Zephyr Press); Monica Cure (Dan Sociu’s Deep Fakes forthcoming from World Poetry); Mihaela Moscaliuc (translator of Carmelia Leonte and Liliana Ursu). Vancu himself is a translator of note.
David Larsen’s Names of the Lion and Mark Alexander’s A Little Book of Du Fu (particularly his use of glosses) expanded our sense of what literary translation can do. Stanley Lombardo is a mentor and inspiration to both of us.
Anything else you’d like us to know?
There are even some who, instead of buburuză, say Boul-lui-Dumnezeu, “God’s Ox.”
Photo credit: Donnelly College
Paula Console-Șoican is a lecturer at the University of Kansas and translator, with Cyrus Console-Soican, of Mircea Ionescu-Quintus’s The Devil’s Grinder: Poems of Hope and Despair from the Forced Labor Camps of Post-WWII.
Photo by Ashley Story
Cyrus Console-Șoican teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. He is the author of the poetry collections Brief Under Water, The Odicy, and The Wayfarer. He is translator, with Paula Console-Șoican, of Mircea Ionescu-Quintus’s The Devil’s Grinder: Poems of Hope and Despair from the Forced Labor Camps of Post-WWII.
Radu Vancu is university professor of arts and letters at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. He is the author of eleven volumes of poetry and numerous books of prose. He has also contributed important translations into Romanian, including volumes by W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and John Berryman. Vancu is editor of Poesis International and Transilvania, founder and organizer of the annual international poetry festival “Poets in Transylvania,” and former president of PEN Romania.
The Rope in Bloom is available on our website. Use the code UCPNEW to take 30% off when you order directly from us."
https://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2026/10/30/translating-grief-paula-and-cyrus-console-soican-on-radu-vancus-the-rope-in-bloom.html
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
A clear goal but no single correct answer: translation
Leslie Roberts on Translation, Gamelan, and 1980s New York
By Leslie Roberts
October 30, 2026 11:21 am
Roberts’s solo exhibition at Iowa Projects, is up through November 8.
READ: Kate Briggs's This Little Art, (Fitzcarraldo Editions 2017).
I would love to be a translator if I knew another language well enough. Failing that, I feel lucky to be able to read translator Kate Briggs on that puzzling process, which has a clear goal but no single correct answer. In this engagingly digressive book, she sometimes lets translation become paradigmatic for creative processes in literature and art—all of which, she notes, are mediated by inherent constraints and parameters. As an artist who makes rule-based paintings, this makes perfect sense to me..."
https://www.artforum.com/lists/leslie-roberts-on-translation-gamelan-and-80s-new-york/listen-the-heavenly-orchestra-of-bali-gamelan-semar-pegulingan-saih-pitu-1991/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"‘A privilege, a responsibility and a curse’: The art of literary translation
André Chumko
October 30, 2026
Professor Marco Sonzogni, from Victoria University of Wellington’s school of languages and cultures, co-translated the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson's 2000 book Men in the Off Hours into Italian. Carson was this year awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Post caught up with Sonzogni about the translation process...
Hey Marco! So first things first, how did you connect with Anne?
While I have devoted years to immersing myself in Anne Carson’s literary world, my point of contact with her was her agent via my publisher. My connection is rooted in a deep, scholarly engagement with her writing. The more I read her work, the more I felt the pull to translate it into Italian - even more because Carson is a literary translator herself. That shared vocation created a powerful intellectual bond, even without a direct physical meeting.
How would you describe Men in the Off Hours to someone who’s never read it before?
Layered, complex and extraordinarily beautiful. Even though it was published a quarter of a century ago, it feels as if it were written specifically for our contemporary moment. It represents literary language at its finest, demonstrating everything that literature is capable of when used to express deep feelings, voice radical ideas, and claim new cultural spaces. Anne Carson is one of those writers who extend the possibilities of language.
And how do you actually translate a book, given no two languages are exactly the same?
Translation is an act and a leap of faith. Or, as I like to tell my students, the fattest lie you can tell - that the target text is equivalent to the source text. If it is a lie, and it is, we must tell it in the most convincing way. So, we must acquire and keep honing a cross-cultural mindset and a multilingual skillset.
Literary translation is one of the most challenging but also most rewarding experiences one can have, both as an ordinary or specialised reader. Not only do you get to read literature; you also get to re-write it. A privilege, a responsibility and a curse all at once! So, yes, getting someone else - especially a trusted fellow translator or a trusted reader - to share the love and check your work is the smartest and safest move any translator can make.
What are the most challenging aspects of being a translator?
The most difficult moments occur when linguistic, cultural and literary differences push you into a corner you feel you’re never going to come out of - and if by luck or skill you managed to, it would be to meet many a finger pointed at you by one person or another and for one reason or another. This feeling never leaves you, really, no matter how experienced or seasoned you are, or think you are. Every new translation makes you understand the process more deeply and more holistically - and, one hopes, it also makes you a better translator along the way. Remaining intellectually and emotionally in one piece when faced with the most challenging literary passages in verse or prose is both gruelling and gratifying. Translating a book like Men in the Off Hours was like being on a relentless rollercoaster.
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Nobel Prize winner Anne Carson pictured in 2024.
Photo: Jay Dixit / WikiPortraits
What are the most rewarding parts?
There is a profound joy in seeing an author you have translated receive recognition. What matters is that you’ve contributed to gifting the author and their book new readers, new interpretations, new emotions - an afterlife, as Walter Benjamin would argue. This is the human chain of translation - which can be, perhaps must be, the closest of close-readings and at the same time the most distant of distant (re)writings.
The translator is poised between these two poles, trying to balance objectivity and subjectivity across languages, cultures, traditions, values and audiences. This tension requires that the translator be ready to go the very limit of their intellectual and emotional capabilities.
How is AI affecting the world of translation?
I am an obstinate optimist, and that includes AI. I reject the idea that it will render translators obsolete. Instead, I advocate for human-centred AI. Digital fluency is rapidly becoming the contemporary driver’s licence - a prerequisite for professional life all over the world. AI is a tool, not a substitute for critical thinking. And while AI can provide speed and open new possibilities in the workflow, it must be tempered by the accuracy of human judgment. My current work in AI is guided by human rights and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We must ensure technology respects cultural specificity and the rigour of human thought.
Finally, what’s something not many people know about you?
To wind down and relax, I love watching videos of trains from all over the world."
https://www.thepost.co.nz/culture/361106110/privilege-responsibility-and-curse-art-literary-translation
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"How a Brock researcher is rethinking translation in the AI era
Friday, October 30, 2026 | by Gillian Min
Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures Nicholas Hauck is researching experimental forms of translation and writing in the age of generative artificial intelligence. During a recent conference at Brock University, Hauck gathered international experts in the field including Michael Cronin, Professor of French at Trinity College Dublin.
Nicholas Hauck is sparking dialogue around experimental forms of translation and writing in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures’ (MLLC) explores translation as more than a method of transferring meaning from one language to another. For him, the process about exploring new ways to communicate ideas and understanding cross-cultural contexts.
Hauck, who specializes in French, focuses his research focuses on translation as an interconnected creative practice between text, body, mind and the environment.
“With the advancement of technology and AI, it is more important than ever to consider the ways in which the task of language translation can, or can’t, be done by a computer,” he says.
While AI might be successful at translating instructions for everyday activities, Hauck says it falls short when it comes to translating nuances and meaning found in creative texts such as poetry, one of his research interests.
Hauck says that gap also applies to conversational contexts and the subtleties of local dialects, colloquialisms and expressions that don’t translate easily.
“Translation does not always have to produce an exact equivalent. It can involve emotions, sounds or movement. Translation can also be multimodal and what AI cannot yet do is engage in the playfulness and experimental nature of the practice,” he says.
A poem might be best translated through movement, dance or another visual medium, Hauck says, using creative practices to enrichen the experience of understanding the language.
To move beyond conventional notions of translation, it’s essential to understand how the process has evolved over time, says Dante Ognibene, who works alongside Hauck as a research assistant.
“Considering the premise of writing and translation is intriguing, especially when thinking beyond traditional definitions of both practices. Our research explores how meanings are translated through multimodal ways, including in the media, for example,” says the fifth-year Concurrent Teacher Education and French Studies student.
Motivated to add more perspectives to the conversation, Hauck and Ognibene recently gathered scholars, writers and translation experts from across Canada as well as the United Kingdom and United States at Brock to further explore the practice of experimental translation.
Presented by MLLC, the New (and Old) Experiments in Translation (and Writing) Conference took place at Brock’s main campus and the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts from Oct. 22 to 24.
Themes explored included non-conventional forms of writing and translation, multimodal methods of translation, eco-translation and non-human writing.
A key theme discussed was transcreation, a portmanteau of “translation” and “creation” that refers to the process of reimagining texts in different languages and cultures instead of translating word for word and focusing solely on meaning.
“Our goal is to foster dialogue that shifts away from the framework of translation as a transactional model between languages towards recognizing and attempting to account for the multidimensional, multimodal negotiations that occur in and through translation,” Hauck says.
It’s clear, Hauck notes, that the conversation surrounding translation and AI is here to stay — but translation encompasses so much more.
“Translation is really about care and hospitality for others, for our environment and for all the living worlds we cohabitate. If we want to keep living in and with these worlds respectfully, ethically, then we’re going to need translation to develop relationships.”"
https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2026/10/how-a-brock-researcher-is-rethinking-translation-in-the-ai-era/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Translation across theoretical, historical, methodological, and empirical dimensions, assessing how marginality informs, challenges, and redefines the discipline and practice
CFP: (Re)Thinking the Margins of Translation
Submission deadline: January 20, 2027
Conference date(s):
May 20, 2027 - May 21, 2027
Conference Venue:
Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona, Spain
Topic areas
Philosophy of Language
Details
This symposium invites scholars to re-examine the notion of the “margin” in relation to translation across theoretical, historical, methodological, and empirical dimensions, assessing how marginality informs, challenges, and redefines the discipline and practice of translation. At the same time, the symposium also seeks to open discussions about the very notion of “margin”, its significance, and whether conventional ideas and locations of “the marginal” must be reassessed in light of current global transformations.
For full information and CfP, please visit: https://www.upf.edu/web/traduccio/w/international-symposium-re-thinking-the-margins-of-translation
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Luis Pegenaute (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Rosario Hubert (Trinity College, Hartford)
Key dates
Deadline for submissions: 20 January 2027
Notification of acceptance: 12 February 2027
Deadline for registration (no fees applied): 28 February 2027
Symposium dates: 20-21 May 2027
Submissions
All proposals must include title, abstract (200-300 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words).
Send the abstract to: marginstranslat@outlook.com
Scientific Committee: Regina Galasso (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Marta Pacheco Pinto (Universidade de Lisboa), Carles Prado-Fonts (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), Mario Santana (University of Chicago), Cheng Yiyang (Fudan University), Florence Xiangyun Zhang (Université Paris Cité)
Venue:
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Department of Translation and Language Sciences
Campus Poblenou, Carrer Roc Boronat, 138
08018 Barcelona
Room: 55.309 (Tànger building)
Convenors: Esther Gimeno Ugalde & Manuel Pavón-Belizón
Organized by: Department of Translation and Language Sciences
Grup de Recerca en Traducció, Recepció i Literatura Catalana (TRILCAT)
https://www.upf.edu/web/traduccio/w/international-symposium-re-thinking-the-margins-of-translation
Supporting material
Add supporting material (slides, programs, etc.)"
https://philevents.org/event/show/155529
#metaglossia #metaglossia_mundus
"Why Christians are racing to translate Scripture before Iran’s political future changes
Iran (MNN) — AI is helping translate the Bible into Iran’s ethnic languages faster, at a lower cost, and with less risk to translators. This is exciting news because speed matters.
“The race really is to get ready for an open Iran,” says Lana Silk, president and CEO at Transform Iran, “because we are fully anticipating that God is going to shake that nation further and open it up to the gospel in a way that it has never been before.”
You may have heard that Iran has one of the fastest-growing churches in the world. But Silk says it is mostly happening among Farsi speakers, who have access to Scripture in their language. Today, dozens of languages spoken in Iran have no Scripture available in them.
“There’s a real Bible poverty happening across these other [ethnic] people groups,” Silk says. “And the evidence is seen in the impact of the gospel.”
She says they envision having Bible translations completed and Bibles printed and ready for distribution within Iran — before Iran opens up.
“I believe it will be too late for the regime to fall, and then for the Church to say, ‘Oh, we want to go into Balochistan. We want to go into Kurdistan. Oh, let’s get a Bible. They don’t have a Bible.’ That will be too late,” says Silk. “By the time we have organized ourselves, we will have lost that prime time window of opportunity to establish the church and to reach the lost when they’re really open to it.”
Transform Iran’s new AI tool is projected to shorten the time needed to complete a New Testament from 18 months to one year. Silk says AI alone could do it in six months, but the ministry is allowing more time.
“We want humans to be involved in the process and make sure that the end result is something that will serve church planting and church formation, and not just be a translation that would sit on a shelf,” Silk says.
One more strength of Transform Iran’s AI tool is that it can be used without internet access. That helps translators in dangerous areas protect their safety and privacy.
Will you help prepare for an open Iran by investing in Bible translation today? Silk says a few translation teams already have funding and are underway, “but we have several other New Testaments that have teams ready to go that are waiting for enough of a funding boost for us to be able to bring them together and get going.”
Because of AI-driven streamlining, the cost of translating one verse of Scripture has dropped from $35 to $15.
“I would be really inviting the listeners to consider how many verses could you sponsor to get translated,” says Silk.
Visit transformiran.com to learn more and join these translation efforts."
By Katie O'Malley
October 30, 2026
https://www.mnnonline.org/news/why-christians-are-racing-to-translate-scripture-before-irans-political-future-changes/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus: ????!!!🤔🤔🤔
"Court Interpreter Shortages Leave Defendants Waiting for Justice
Without courtroom interpreters, language gaps can lead to confusion, misunderstandings and wrongful trial outcomes. Cook County’s court interpreter workforce is chronically understaffed, with low pay, stressful working conditions and the psychological toll of the job contributing to recruitment and retention challenges.
Fewer than 30 full-time court interpreters work across the entire county, according to Elsa Prado, a Cook County Court Interpreters Union representative.
“It’s critical to have language access because that [can] make the difference between probably convicting a person, having a person taken into custody,” Prado said.
The county relies on contract interpreters to fill in the gaps, but Prado said the court system realistically needs to double its certified interpreter workforce to function effectively.
The shortage can leave a single interpreter responsible for multiple courtrooms at once, forcing them to juggle simultaneous proceedings. When a contract interpreter cancels or fails to show, there may be no available replacement, potentially delaying hearings and leaving people waiting for the language assistance they need to participate in their cases.
The recently sworn-in Chief Judge Charles Beach is prioritizing staffing the Interpreters’ Office, Abdon Pallasch, director of communications at Cook County Circuit Court told TCR, with 10 new full-time interpreters hired in recent months, bringing the total to 28.
Cook County’s diverse language needs
Approximately 1 million Illinois residents speak English less than “very well” and may require language assistance to access state services, and a quarter of Illinoisans—totalling nearly 3 million—speak a language other than English at home.
Limited-English-Proficiency (LEP) residents have risen substantially in recent years due to migration from Venezuela and Ukraine.
Pallasch said between 2025 and 2026 there were close to 70,000 requests for interpretations in Spanish, and nearly 2,000 in Polish, as well as Arabic. More than 3,000 other requests spanned other languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Urdu, and more.
Waiting to be understood
People who depend on an interpreter can face real consequences when one is unavailable. Delays force them to miss work, pay for additional child care or spend hours waiting for their case to be heard. In some cases, Prado said, leaving before a case is called can result in a warrant for failing to appear in court, potentially accompanied by the forfeiture of bail. Scheduling delays can last months.
“Why should they have to wait another month, or why would people have to be postponed in such a manner because [courts] don’t provide the service that they need to provide?” Prado said. “That is a constitutional right.”
A growing problem
The shortage of qualified interpreters is a nationwide problem, Middlebury Institute of International Studies professor Holly Mikkelson told TCR. The profession is aging as interpreters and translators retire, while younger workers may be less inclined to enter the field amid the rise of artificial intelligence, she said.
But Mikkelson warned AI cannot reliably replace human interpreters—particularly when attorneys depend on the precise interpretation of witness testimony—which can be critical to a case. Mikkelson said she regularly sees notices for openings in federal courts and hears about shortages of certified interpreters across the country. “I don’t think there’s a shortage of people who want to work as interpreters, but there’s certainly a shortage of certified interpreters,” she said.
Communication challenges go beyond translating words from one language to another—interpreters must be able to use and explain legal terminology, understand regional dialects, slang, context, and the way people actually speak under the stress of testifying in court.
“Interpreting testimony, interpreting—really, I don’t think oral proceedings in general can be handled well enough with AI,” Mikkelson said. “It’s getting better, but when you’re talking about going from one language to another, there are too many complexities for AI to deal with.”
No justice without communication
When qualified interpreters are unavailable, courts can be forced to compromise the quality of interpretation, potentially affecting defendants’ due process rights, jurors’ perceptions and the public’s faith in the judicial system.
“It’s fundamentally a due process issue–meaningful participation in courts,” Noor Alawawda, the Senior Program Manager for Language Access at the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) said. “When someone’s civil liberties are at risk, it’s not just convenience.”
The problem persists despite decades of federal guidance intended to improve language access. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order directing recipients of federal financial assistance – including state and local governments – to take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to services for people with limited English proficiency and warning that inadequate access could constitute discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The interpreter shortage is particularly acute for languages other than Spanish, which is the most commonly requested language in U.S. courts. Illinois’ oral court-interpreter exam is offered in 22 languages, while interpreters of other languages may have to qualify through an oral proficiency interview, making it difficult for courts to find qualified interpreters for less commonly spoken languages, Mikkelson said. Remote interpretation services can fill some gaps, but courts may have to rely on companies’ assurances that interpreters are qualified.
“The courts can’t do their job without qualified interpreters,” Mikkelson said. “And the Supreme Court has found there are lots and lots of legal cases demonstrating that proper interpretation is a matter of due process.”
Because Illinois is a non-unified court system, each county hires and schedules their own interpreters. Some are unionized and shortages vary by county, but rural areas like Hancock, with populations of 18,000 or less, face some of the steepest shortages in qualified interpreters, Alawawda said.
Languages of limited diffusion–languages spoken by a relatively small or geographically concentrated population, making qualified interpreters harder to find–require at least 48 hour notice to get an interpreter on the phone, Alawawda said.
A nationwide problem
According to Robert Joe Lee, a member of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators’ (NAJIT) Advocacy Committee, courts across the country face bottlenecks at nearly every stage of the process. Recruitment, certification, scheduling, compensation and retention can all contribute to shortages of qualified interpreters, he said.
About 14 percent of Illinois residents have some type of hearing loss, and about 3 percent are deaf, according to the Illinois Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission.
Communication can be more complex for people who use other sign languages, such as Mexican Sign Language. In those cases, Wohlmuth said, the court may use a relay in which an interpreter familiar with Mexican Sign Language communicates through a certified deaf interpreter and a hearing interpreter. For deaf people with limited formal language instruction, interpreters and court personnel may also need to establish signs or use drawings and concrete examples to ensure meaningful access.
Being bilingual does not necessarily qualify someone to interpret in court. Court interpreters must understand legal terminology and courtroom procedure, know how to interpret simultaneously and consecutively, and be able to convey legal concepts accurately between languages, Mikkelson said. Using an unqualified interpreter can distort testimony and, in serious cases, force a retrial to ensure a reliable record and due process.
The same principle applies to sign-language interpretation. Wohlmuth said there can be substantial linguistic variation within the deaf community, and courts cannot assume that a person will automatically understand an interpreter simply because both people use sign language.
In the past 20 years, Chicago has seen a surge of people from Mexico and Central America who speak indigenous languages that the courts have never heard before, presenting a unique problem, Lee said. Video remote interpreting and telephone interpreting has been adopted for such less spoken languages. Lee added that when staff interpreters are unavailable, the system relies on contract interpreters, and the quality is not guaranteed in the same way.
Prado attributed Cook County’s interpreter shortage to five factors: compensation, heavy workloads and understaffing, working conditions and burnout, a limited recruitment pipeline, and certification requirements.
Lee added that working conditions in the courts are not conducive to mental health. Court interpreters can also face a psychological toll from the work itself. A 2023 systematic review of research on interpreters working in domestic violence and other traumatic settings found that repeated exposure to victims’ accounts of violence can lead to distress, anxiety, sadness, helplessness and vicarious trauma — a form of trauma response that can develop through empathetic engagement with another person’s traumatic experiences.
On top of mental health concerns, interpreters sometimes find higher pay in the private sector, and find few avenues for professional development in the public court interpreting world. Lee said three basic levels exist in public courts; a probationary level, an entry level, and a master level.
“There’s a huge reluctance in the public sector to understand and treat court interpreting as a bona fide profession that deserves respect and appreciation,” Lee said.
More Reads by TCR"
by Jack Austin
October 30, 2026
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/court-interpreter-shortages-leave-defendants-waiting-for-justice/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
“La hice re larga”: Messi olvidó al traductor y protagonizó un divertido momento en la Messi Cup
El argentino dio un extenso discurso en español durante la inauguración de su torneo juvenil y recién al terminar recordó que debían traducirlo al inglés
27 octubre, 2026
Lionel Messi puede dejar a los defensas sin respuestas, pero esta vez quien tuvo que esperar fue su traductor. El campeón del mundo protagonizó una escena tan espontánea como divertida durante la inauguración de la Messi Cup, el torneo juvenil que lleva su nombre y que reúne a equipos de Europa y América en Miami.
Todo ocurrió cuando el capitán argentino tomó el micrófono para darles la bienvenida a los futbolistas de la categoría sub-16. Messi empezó a hablar en español y se extendió con un mensaje sobre la importancia de disfrutar la competencia, hacer amigos y llevarse recuerdos que duren toda la vida.
El problema llegó al final: mientras los asistentes escuchaban atentamente, el traductor esperaba su turno para pasar las palabras al inglés. Leo terminó su intervención, miró hacia el intérprete y cayó en cuenta de que se había olvidado de darle espacio para traducir.
“Perdón, me olvidé que vas a traducir, la hice re larga, ¿no?”, soltó entre risas.
La frase provocó las carcajadas de los presentes y convirtió el discurso inaugural en uno de los momentos más comentados de la jornada.
Lionel Messi tuvo un divertido momento en Estados Unidos (Fuente: ESPN MX)
Messi: la respuesta del traductor también hizo reír
El intérprete no se quedó callado y respondió con una salida igual de oportuna:
“Sí, pero la vamos a hacer cortito porque tampoco queremos que los chicos se queden bajo la lluvia”.
La ocurrencia terminó de redondear la escena. Messi había querido dejarles un mensaje especial a los jóvenes, pero su entusiasmo lo llevó a olvidarse por completo de los tiempos de la traducción. Al final, el pequeño despiste terminó robándose parte de la atención de la ceremonia."
https://caretas.pe/deportes/la-hice-re-larga-messi-olvido-al-traductor-y-protagonizo-un-divertido-momento-en-la-messi-cup/
#metaglossia .
#metaglossia_mundus
Use “plain English” to avoid confusing international students
"A style guide issued by the University of Oxford advises staff to use “plain English” to avoid confusing international students. The style guide is designed to ensure clear communication from University staff.
In the guide, which was published earlier this year, the University suggested that staff “be mindful of idioms that may not be familiar to international readers”. Phrases and idioms to avoid include “learn the ropes” and “find your feet”.
This guidance is intended to benefit international students. A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “As a global university with staff and students from around the world, we write for a wide international audience. The guide provides practical advice for written University communications, from punctuation to choosing language that readers will readily understand.” International students make up 43% of Oxford students overall and 60% of graduate students.
While recognising the advice’s intention, some international students have criticised the guide as “a bit overdone”. Speaking with Cherwell, one student said that “idioms [sic] are integral parts of the English language. It makes Oxford, Oxford.”
Another student, Juniper Chan, told Cherwell: “It’s kind of anti-integration, anti-naturalisation… to baby people. When I first got to the UK, I didn’t get a lot of stuff, but you have to kind of pick it up.”
Students have acknowledged the difficulties language barriers create at university. Chan told Cherwell: “There is a certain level of shame that comes with it [but Oxford] is a very international place.You could always ask your friends for help.”
Oxford requires non-native English speakers to prove their proficiency when they apply, requesting evidence of C1 or C2 level ability on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The British Council defines C1 as the ability to “understand a wide range of more difficult, longer texts” and to “recognise implicit meanings”, a skill that should enable students to understand the idioms the University advises against.
The guidance has created controversy online. For example, Lord Young of the Free Speech Union said: “One of the reasons international students come to Oxford is so that they can immerse themselves in our culture and master colloquial English.”
The University also added that its style guide is non-proscriptive. A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “Its writing guidance is advisory and supports staff in exercising their own judgement about the language they use and the audience they are writing for.”
Miriam Ilderton
28th October 2026
https://cherwell.org/2026/10/28/oxford-style-guide-criticised-international-students/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
More than words: what is lost when a language dies
Language diversity 28 October 2026 text: Tim Senden image: Jan-Joseph Stok / DoBeS Yurakare
"When languages die, more is lost than words alone: knowledge, traditions and community also come under pressure. In his inaugural lecture, Professor by Special Appointment Rik van Gijn explains why linguistic diversity matters and what language tells us about the past.
Van Gijn spent years in the Bolivian interior searching for a ritual mourning language. The grandparents of the people he spoke to had still used this language, but they no longer did. Then, one day, a Yurakaré man suddenly said to him: ‘Sit down and get your recording equipment ready.’
‘For five minutes I listened spellbound to what was believed to be a lost ritual language.
I didn’t understand a word of it because it was so different from the everyday language’, Van Gijn recalls of a memorable moment during his fieldwork. ‘I’d gained their trust, and it was an incredibly emotional moment.’
‘People don’t give up their language for the fun of it’
The disappearing language of the Yurakaré
For over 20 years, Van Gijn has studied the disappearing language of the Yurakaré, an indigenous group of a few thousand people living in small communities across an area the size of Belgium. They live along the Isiboro and Sécure rivers and in Chapare Province in central Bolivia, and make their living from agriculture, fishing, hunting and seasonal work. In many of these small communities, Spanish has become the common language, placing Yurakaré under increasing pressure. And that has consequences.
Language loss is closely linked to the breakdown of communities, says Van Gijn. ‘People don’t give up their language for the fun of it’, he says. People hope that another language will give them a better life or shield them from racism. But relinquishing a language comes at the expense of cultural heritage and social cohesion, to the point where a grandfather can no longer speak with his grandchild.
Knowledge disappears with language
As a language disappears, so does knowledge, for example about traditional medicine. Among the Tsimane, neighbours of the Yurakaré, treatment of a disease was less effective in a village where traditional knowledge of medicinal plants had been lost than in a village where it had been maintained.
Languages, says Van Gijn, contain small, efficient units of information about the environment in which they originated, which children naturally absorb as they learn the language. When people switch to Spanish, these distinctions disappear. The same applies to ritual language and the knowledge needed to weave traditional Yurakaré tunics.
Your own language is a human right
Van Gijn does not want to dictate which language people should speak. ‘If I were Yurakaré, I would also learn Spanish. The question is: should you give up your own language or can you continue to use it alongside Spanish?’
More countries are recognising that the right to your own language, and to education in that language, is a human right. According to Van Gijn, it helps if children are taught all their subjects in Yurakaré at primary school. ‘It’s a valuable language, and that in turn boosts cultural self-confidence.’
He does not see it as a problem that traditions change. The problem is that ‘there’s a hard break’, and that people, often out of necessity, distance themselves from those traditions.
Traces of the past
Language also tells us about the past. Anyone who migrates or comes into contact with other groups leaves traces in the language, such as loanwords and grammatical changes. Van Gijn compares that with what genetics and archaeology reveal.
A workshop on the history of Bolivia, involving anthropologists, archaeologists and geneticists, highlighted the deep history of both cultural diversity and contact in the region. In languages, this is reflected in the many small language families that share grammatical features.
Sometimes disciplines contradict one another. Genetics and archaeology place the first human crossing from Siberia to Alaska and the Americas at around 20,000 years ago, while some linguists argue that so many language families could not have emerged in such a relatively short time. ‘Then you have a mismatch, and that makes it all the more interesting because you have to resolve that paradox.’ To unravel that early human history, he believes further collaboration between disciplines is needed.
Influence on research
Van Gijn also wants to break down the barrier that still exists between researchers and the linguistic communities they study. ‘We come from a tradition where the professor goes into the field, collects data, returns home and then publishes in academic journals. That is changing.’ Speaker communities are gradually gaining more influence over research agendas. ‘More research based on co-creation and collaboration, so that it also benefits them, seems like a positive development to me.’
Rik van Gijn gave his inaugural lecture, ‘Linguistic Diversity Forever!’ in the Academy Building on Friday 23 October at 16.00."
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2026/10/more-than-words-what-is-lost-when-a-language-dies
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
"CfP: Interculturality and Hospitality in Times of Crisis
International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies
9th International Conference
University of Canterbury | Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha
Christchurch, New Zealand
7-10 December 2027
Interculturality and Hospitality in Times of Crisis
Conference Theme
Language, hospitality, and crisis are, and always have been, historically and globally intertwined concepts.
The notion of hospitality is deeply rooted in complex and long-standing histories of encounters; of conflict and persecution; but also of travel and adventure. The specular relationship between alterity and subjectivity is at its core, and so too is the very fabric of sociability. The closest Te Reo Māori equivalent to hospitality, manaakitanga, echoes this dynamic, as it implies the collective nurturing of relationships in which the mana (dignity, prestige, and spiritual power) of all those involved is upheld and elevated. From these histories and terms, we are confronted with the (unwritten) rules, obligations, and laws related to hospitality which encapsulate examples on a micro- and macrostructural level: from welcoming guests into a nation—as immigrants or refugees—to providing shelter and support in the community in times of crisis, right down to individual acts of kindness and aid, such as welcoming a friend, family-member or stranger into one’s home. However, not all guests and hosts are created equal, and hospitality is not always synonymous with kindness and welcoming. The (de)colonial perspectives evident from Latin America to Oceania and beyond, where indigenous peoples were constructed as ‘unwelcome guests’ in their own land, offer fruitful examples of how historically, as well as in contemporary contexts, hospitality has often functioned as a lens through which asymmetrical power relations can be understood.
Several linguists and philosophers have scrutinized the ambivalence inherent to hospitality, elucidating its semantic and pragmatic conceptions, as well as its etymological misunderstandings and polysemy. Paola Zaccaria summarizes this dynamic as follows: “In Latin, the guest, being a stranger, was called both hospes (whence the etymological root of hospitality) and hostis, which means “enemy.” [Émile] Benveniste argued that the notion of favorable stranger evolved into guest, while a hostile stranger was considered an enemy" (Zaccaria, 2022, p. 182). Such etymological linkage led Jacques Derrida to coin the neologism “hostipitality” (Derrida & Dufourmantelle, 2000), suggesting that welcoming the Other can lead to a host’s vulnerability, and that embedded within hospitality are the very seeds of its own potential destruction. Welcoming the guest—the Other, a frenemy, AI—can lead to the host’s sovereignty unravelling, where sovereignty can be understood in its broadest conceptual sense possible: one’s space (or home) as well as one’s identity and integrity. This intersubjective blending is even more apparent when we take into consideration that Derrida writes in French where the term hôte can denote, depending on the context, either guest or host. Interpretations and translations of hospitality continue today: whether it be as a pragmatic form or an abstract, philosophical construct, the concept will (and arguably should) never be laid to rest.
While the very notion of hospitality, the givenness of its communal veracity is obviously enabling, we do not need to look too far in our current climate to witness how conceptually, at least, it has been called into crisis. ‘Crisis,’ at its very root, indicates a turning point and a decision. Not all crises are therefore inherently bad or negative, and yet the term is rarely shrouded in positivity. In a post-truth era; as we explore the use and limits of AI; as we further communicate through the semiotics of emojis; as teeter-tottering governments modify language policies, and as institutional settings regulate and enact the boundaries in which we work and live, we must ask: is language—and are languages—in crisis? And can the same be said of hospitality? Translation, Interpreting, and interculturality are at the very heart of both hospitality and crisis, as the latter inevitably creates contexts of language contact due to globalization, as well as chosen and forced migration.
With this conference topic, there are two potential thematic avenues for presenters to explore in relation to Translation, Interpreting, as well as Intercultural Studies: one more aligned with the multifaceted notion and voices of ‘hospitality’ and the other with ‘crisis.’ This conference therefore calls on scholars, educators, and practitioners to reflect and present on these disciplines and their interaction with these themes as they play out in their professional, creative, and scholarly reflections and important work.
Possible subthemes to explore include:
· T&I and the guest-host dynamic
· Violence in/and T&I
· Language(s) in crisis
· Hospitality and crisis
· Regional and minority languages
· Data Sovereignty and indigenous languages
· AI and/in crisis – trust, machine translation, and language access in crisis situations
· T&I in hospitality & tourism
· T&I in regional conflicts
· T&I in natural disasters
· Hospitality and ethics in relation to volunteer translation, AI-assisted translation, and the sustainability of the profession
· The translation/non-translation of literature as examples of hostipitality
· Rethinking T&I and sovereignty through Indigenous Knowledges
· The ethics and politics of translation and intercultural studies research, education, and practice: a turning point?
· (Feminist) ethics of care
· Disability Studies and the Politics of language(s) in translation and interpretation – who gets to speak?
· Lost languages – linguistic preservation, hospitality, and ethics
· Resisting the status quo – rethinking dissemination of translations as a question of the commons
Language Policy
· All abstracts/proposals for individual papers (20 minutes each) and panels must be submitted in English or Te Reo Māori for peer-review by the Advisory Board, and all papers will be presented in English or Te Reo Māori. Interpreting will be provided contingent on available funds.
· Workshop proposals must be submitted in English or Te Reo Māori for peer-review by the Scientific Committee; however, presentations during workshops in languages other than English or Te Reo Māori are welcome. A minimum of two presenters is required for workshops. Interpreting will be provided contingent on available funds.
Key Deadlines
· 15 November 2026: Deadline for potential convenors to submit panel, workshop, roundtable or artistic initiatives
· 20 December 2026: Announcement of the accepted proposals (panels, workshops, roundtables and artistic initiatives) & call for papers and performances.
· 20 March 2027: Individual abstract submission to accepted panels and general sessions
· 5 June 2027: Notification of acceptance of proposals (all formats).
· 5 June 2027: Registration opens
· 1 August 2027: Closing date for early registration
Registration
· 5 June 2027: Registration opens
· 1 August 2027: Early-bird registration closes
Link to registration: to be provided soon.
Solidarity Fund and Bursaries for Band 3 & 4 Countries
More information to be provided soon.
CALL FOR PANELS
Panels
Panels will serve as the cornerstone for structuring the conference programme. Panels are thematic, integrated discussions for 6 to 12 sessions on a clearly identified theme or topic within the larger theme of the conference (“Interculturality and Hospitality in Times of Crisis”). They should provide attendees with an opportunity to hear presenters engage in dialogue amongst themselves as well as with attendees about cutting-edge research, practice, theory building, and/or policy development.
Important: at this stage, you do not need to have a list of speakers or abstracts. Your panel proposal will be assessed by the Scientific Committee. If accepted, your panel will then be posted on the IATIS website and turned into a thematic call for papers open for anyone to submit. Panel convenors will be in charge of reviewing all abstracts submitted to their panel. The members of the scientific committee will review panel convenors’ selection before a notification of acceptance of abstracts can be issued.
Timeline for Panels
· Submission of panel proposals: 15 November 2026
· Announcement of accepted panel proposals: 20 December 2026
· Submission to accepted panels: 20 March 2027
· Acceptance notification: 1 June 2027
Link to the submission platform: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iatis9
The following information will be required:
· Details about the convenor(s): name, surname, affiliation, bionote (approx..100 words) and contact address
· Details about the proposal: abstract (approx. 500 words)
· Optional: Tentative list of speakers and subtopics covered, if any. Please note that even if you have a list of possible speakers, all accepted panels remain open to submissions by interested IATIS delegates
See examples of IATIS panels in previous conferences:
· Oman Panels 2025
· Barcelona Panels 2021
· Hong Kong Panels 2018
CALL FOR WORKSHOPS
Pre-conference workshops run for a day or half a day on Dec 6 (or Dec 7, subject to enrolment numbers). These workshops are designed to be training sessions on a topic of interest to conference attendees, such as teaching and professional development, with a special emphasis on learning or developing new skills.
Timeline for Workshops
· Submission of workshop proposals: 15 November 2026
· Announcement of acceptance: 20 December 2026
· Workshop Registration: 5 June 2027
Link to the submission platform: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iatis9
CALL FOR ARTISTIC INITIATIVES
These initiatives will reflect the cultures of the world. Artistic initiatives come from conference delegates and can be about or across cultures. They should address the topic of the conference (“Interculturality and Hospitality in Times of Crisis”).
Timeline for Artistic Initiatives
· Submission of artistic initiative proposals: 15 November 2026
· Announcement of acceptance: 20 December 2026
Link to the submission platform: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iatis9
CALL FOR PAPERS
These are individual presentations that form the backbone of the conference's parallel sessions. Researchers can send abstracts to be presented as papers in thematic panels (accepted panels, see above) or independent of any panel in the conference. Papers are given the same amount of time given to panel session papers, and they may be added by the conference scientific committee to an established conference panel, if relevant, and in consultation with the convenor.
Timeline for Papers
· Call for individual papers: 20 December 2026
· Deadline for potential presenters to submit abstracts for papers in and beyond thematic panels: 20 March 2027
· Announcement of accepted papers: 1 June 2027
The following information will be required:
· Details about the presenter(s): name, surname, affiliation, bionote (100 words approx.) and contact address
· Abstract (250 words approx.)
See examples of IATIS papers in previous conferences
· Oman Papers 2025
· Barcelona Papers 2021
· Hong Kong Papers 2018
IATIS https://www.iatis.org/9th-conference-christchurch-2027
Why There Can Never Be a Perfect Bible Translation
Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss the upcoming Catholic American Bible. Jimmy explains the complexities of translating biblical texts and why no translation can be considered perfect, highlighting the challenges that arise from language differences.
Transcript:
Cy Kellett: Will, thank you for waiting. Go ahead with your question.
Caller: Hey, Jimmy. And it sounds like we’ve got a new version of the Bible coming up or a new edition. Excuse me. The Catholic American Bible. And I’m excited about it. Sounds great. And I looked at the panel and the people that have contributed to the Midwest Theological Forum. I think it looks great. Looks like new translation of the Greek and updating the Old Testament as well from the Nabre version and a new version of the Psalms. But you know, looking at the Catholic American Bible when it comes out, you know, how should we compare or assess, a new translation when it comes out?
Jimmy Akin: Well, I guess the first thing is, we should be realistic in what we expect because there are no perfect translations. Languages, just can’t be mapped onto each other in a one to one fashion. an example I often use is, for example, the translation of idioms. for example, in English we have this idiom. And Cy knows, I’m sure Where I’m going, we have this idiom in English, roll out the red carpet, which does not mean. Does not mean there is a literal red carpet that needs to be rolled out. It’s a way of saying we need to take great pains because a dignitary is visiting if we need to roll out the red carpet for someone. But if you translated that literally into Spanish, it wouldn’t mean anything. People would think there is a literal red carpet because that expression is not, is not one that is found in Spanish. There is a Spanish equivalent idiom, though, and I wonder if Sa Kellet remembers what that one is. Do you happen to remember the Spanish equivalent of roll out the red carpet,
Cy Kellett: Throw everything out the window?
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, throw the house out.
Cy Kellett: Okay, yeah.
Caller: Yeah. Okay.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. So that’s one example. And it doesn’t just operate on the level of expressions like that. It also operates even on the level of individual words. And we’ve seen two examples of that already in today’s show. Cy Kellett.
Cy Kellett: Yes, sir?
Jimmy Akin: When you asked me the question about, women teaching, what terms exist in Greek now, I’m not asking for the word, but what are their English equivalents that translators have to make a choice. Do we translate it this way or that? Just about 40 minutes ago, like wife
Cy Kellett: Or woman, husband or man?
Jimmy Akin: Exactly. When you encounter gune, which is the Greek word for woman or wife, you’ve got to make a choice. Which way do I translate it? And when you encounter the word aner, which means either man or husband, you’ve got to make a choice. How do I do it? We also saw another example of that in our most recent call, because we hit the word Torah, which you could translate law like the Septuagint translators did, or you could translate it instruction. So even just on the level of individual words, you’ve got to make choices. And humans, you know, most of them are human. Wouldn’t you agree? Psychalic? Most humans are human.
Cy Kellett: I’ve noticed most are, yes.
Jimmy Akin: Well, they have to make these tough calls, and there’s not a single right choice. You know, like in the previous call, if you go with the Septuagint translation and say, we’re going to translate Torah as namas or law, well, then that’s going to suggest something to the reader that’s slightly different than would be suggested by instruction. You’re going to lose some of the connotations and you’re going to create other connotations that the word law has so, there’s always a trade off and different translators make different trade offs and sometimes they make mistakes. So there are no perfect translations. As they say, in Italian, translator, traitor. In other words, every time you translate, you in some sense betray what was said in the original language. So we shouldn’t expect perfection, but how much can we expect? Well, we actually can expect a good bit these days. In fact, all professionally published translations by major publishers, they’re all pretty good. There aren’t any that are just horrible. Now there are, some translations that are just horrible, like the Jehovah’s Witness New World translation, that’s just a bad translation, but it’s not a professionally published one. when you have actual scholarly committees that are doing these things, scholars today are very competent and they use the best scholarship that we have available. And so all the translations are pretty good. What they differ on is the choices they make in translation. And there are a variety of these. Kind of at the top level you have to make a decision of are we going to use what’s called a formal equivalence translation philosophy or a dynamic equivalence translation philosophy. Formal translation tries to stick to the word order as closely as possible in the language you’re translating into, which, so it’s kind of a word for word translation. Whereas dynamic equivalence tries to focus on the thoughts, but allow the word order and such to vary. And so it’s often described as not a word for word translation, but a thought for thought translation. Well, both of those have advantages. The word for word translation is going to preserve details from the original language that dynamic equivalence won’t preserve. On the other hand, that makes it a little more obscure and harder to read. Whereas with dynamic equivalence it’s easier to read and maybe more clearly understood, but it does mean sacrificing some of the detail. So there’s no right or wrong here. Personally, for Bible reading I have no just absorbing text in bulk. I have no problem with dynamic equivalence. But for Bible study where you’re focusing more on details, I would use formal equivalence rather than dynamic. Then there are other translation choices that have to be made. Like one that’s been controversial in recent years is what’s called inclusive language, where there are some translations, like the New Revised Standard Version, that will try to avoid gendered language whenever possible. so they will not say he or she. In many cases, the opposite of that would be using traditional gendered language, which just uses he as the default for everything. And then there’s kind of a middle position that says what we’re going to try to do is use the language that, that’s there in the original. So if we won’t, we won’t fuzz away he’s and she’s when they’re in the original. But when it uses a neutral, a gender neutral term like human, you know, the Greek word for which is anthropos, it’s different than gune, which means woman, and it’s different than anair, which means man. But. But anthropos just means person or human. Well, we’ll just translate it as person or human there without assuming he as the default. And so there’s kind of a range of translation choices on this level. And I would say that since they’re all basically good these days, if they’re professionally published by teams of scholars, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I would. Rather than asking, is it okay to use this? I would try to find out what translation choices, did the translators make. And one of the ways to find that out is by reading the literature that is released with the Bible translation, either as an introduction, like a preface, in the translation itself or in publicity material. it’ll say, we did this and we did this. And you can get a sense of it and decide do you like it or not? And in individual verses, you will find things that are just wrong or arguably wrong. But, for me, if I’m evaluating a new translation, I’m not looking for perfection. And I am more thinking about what would this be useful for? Because to me, the best is to go straight to the original languages. But if you’re going to be using translations, which I do, because I can read English faster than I can read Greek and Hebrew. I mean, I can go to the Greek and the Hebrew when I need to, but it’s faster to just read English most of the time. And when I use translations, the best translation is actually having multiple translations. So I can see how different people read the same passage. And that can open up interpretive possibilities that might not have occurred to me otherwise. Like in the first question we had today, if all I’d ever seen are translations of, First Timothy 2:12 that say woman and man, and had never seen a translation that uses wife and husband, I might have entirely missed that translation option and that interpretive option. So it’s valuable to have not just one translation, but multiple translations that all can be consulted.
Cy Kellett: Will, I got to leave it there because I got to get to the break."
Jimmy Akin • 10/27/2026
https://www.catholic.com/video/why-there-can-never-be-a-perfect-bible-translation
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
UNIGE scientists reveal in mice, the role of a small brain structure in holding information in mind so it can be used a few moments later.
Reading a sentence, following a conversation, solving a problem or deciding what to do next: all of these rely on working memory. It allows the brain to hold information in mind for a few seconds, even after the stimulus has disappeared, to be able to compare it with new information, manipulate it and use it to guide our behaviour. It therefore plays an essential role in the transition from perception to thought, and from thought to action. UNIGE scientists show that this function relies in part on a small, deep brain structure, the claustrum, whose neurons help keep a trace of information for tens of seconds. Moreover, inhibiting the claustrum leads to a marked drop in working memory performance. These results, published in Nature Communications, add a piece to the puzzle of the circuits underlying thought, a key issue for disorders in which working memory is impaired, notably ADHD and schizophrenia.
Without working memory, it would be difficult to think, understand, decide or adapt our behaviour. Indispensable, it is also extremely demanding for the brain. Sensory information vanishes within moments once the stimulus ends, yet its representation must remain stable enough to be used later.
How does the brain manage to retain information that is no longer there? We now know that working memory does not depend on a single brain region, but on the interaction of vast networks involving, among others, the prefrontal cortex, sensory regions, the parietal cortex, the thalamus and other subcortical structures. However, how these networks maintain a representation of information over time remains largely unknown.
To decipher these mechanisms, the teams led by Alan Carleton, Full Professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the Faculty of Medicine, and Ivan Rodriguez, Full Professor in the Department of Genetics and Evolution at the Faculty of Science, set out to explore the role of the claustrum in working memory. This thin structure lies deep within the brain, between the insular cortex and the striatum. “Its neurons are connected to almost all regions of the cortex, which puts it in a good position to receive and influence information from very different networks,” explains Alan Carleton.
A trace that outlasts the wait
To test this, the scientists studied mice that received a first piece of information, either an odour or a tactile stimulation. They then had to wait several seconds before receiving a second stimulus and determine whether it was identical to or different from the first one. During this interval, the initial stimulus had disappeared. Yet to succeed at the task, the mice had to keep an internal representation of it. “Our live recordings of claustrum neuron activity showed that a trace of the initial information persisted throughout the entire waiting period,” describes Ivan Rodriguez. “Far from being a static memory, neuronal activity changed over time. Nevertheless, the identity of the stimulus remained sufficiently present to be decoded up to 30 seconds later.”
Without the claustrum, memory falters
To determine whether this structure is truly necessary for working memory, or merely accompanies it, the scientists temporarily reduced the activity of claustrum neurons. The team notably used optogenetics, a technique that makes certain neurons sensitive to light through specific proteins, allowing their activity to be controlled with an optical fibre at precise moments of the task. When this neuronal activity was disrupted, the mice’s working memory performance was halved.
“The result was similar regardless of the type of stimulus, olfactory or tactile, and regardless of when the disruption occurred during the waiting period between the two stimuli,” adds Alan Carleton. “Moreover, disrupting the claustrum specifically impairs the ability to use temporarily held information to guide behaviour, without affecting perception itself.”
What does this mean for cognitive disorders?
Working memory thus relies on the dynamic activity of neuronal networks, which must preserve information while allowing the brain to keep perceiving, thinking and acting. The claustrum plays a central role in this complex architecture thanks to its connections with many of the cortical regions involved.
“Our discovery could help us better understand cognitive disorders in which working memory is impaired, such as schizophrenia or ADHD,” explains Alan Carleton. “Identifying the brain circuits that allow information to be maintained over time is an important step towards understanding how these functions can be disrupted. We now need to determine how the claustrum communicates with cortical networks, and how this interaction preserves the fidelity of the representations held in working memory.”
Journal
Nature Communications
DOI
10.1038/s41467-026-78363-6"
26-Oct-2026
How the brain holds information in mind
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Université de Genève
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1149219
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
Premios Nacionales a las mejores traducciones en 2026
"El jurado ha reconocido a Olivia de Miguel Crespo y a Pablo Martín Sánchez por sus traducciones.
Olivia de Miguel Crespo ha sido galardonada con el Premio Nacional a la Obra de un Traductor, correspondiente al año 2026 y Pablo Martín Sánchez con el Premio Nacional a la Mejor Traducción, correspondiente al año 2026, por la traducción de ‘Lugares’, de Georges Perec (Anagrama), a propuesta del jurado. Cada uno de los premios está dotado con 30.000 euros.
El jurado reconoce a Olivia de Miguel Crespo por “la fidelidad estética y la sensibilidad idiomática con la que captura el ritmo y los matices tonales del original. Olivia de Miguel, toda una institución de la profesión, tiene un curriculum abrumador en el que sobresale el rigor y meticulosidad con los que aborda la traducción de obras complejas de escritoras como Marianne Moore o Virginia Woolf, cuyas voces fragmentarias, innovadoras y a menudo herméticas plantean desafíos singulares al traductor. A ello se suma su asombrosa versatilidad para plasmar con idéntica maestría las ideas políticas y filosóficas de Chesterton o George Orwell”.
Asimismo, el jurado ha señalado que “en su dilatada trayectoria, De Miguel, maestra de traductores, ha sabido mantener la excelencia en su trabajo gracias a la reflexión rigurosa, el dominio de los recursos expresivos y una pasión inquebrantable por un oficio que entiende como una vía constante de búsqueda, curiosidad, descubrimiento y acceso al conocimiento”.
Por su parte, el jurado ha propuesto la traducción de Pablo Martín Sánchez de la obra ‘Lugares’, de Georges Perec “por la calidad, creatividad e ingenio con la que ha superado las múltiples dificultades que entraña transmitir un texto de enorme complejidad”.
Además, el jurado ha expresado que “el minucioso trabajo de Pablo Martín Sánchez destaca por la destreza para abordar una obra inacabada, lo que exige detectar y respetar con rigor sus inherentes incoherencias. Asimismo, la estructura recurrente de la obra obliga a un arduo y constante cotejo de fragmentos dispersos a lo largo de ochocientas páginas. A ello se suma la impecable conservación del rico aparato crítico de la edición original, plasmado en las abundantes notas e introducción que dan visibilidad al traductor y evidencian una profunda solvencia y conocimiento sobre el autor”.
Por último, el jurado ha destacado que “finalmente, ante el desafío de una obra de naturaleza oulipiana, Martín Sánchez demuestra una brillante capacidad para recrear los juegos de palabras originales, forzando los límites del propio idioma y enriqueciéndolo mediante la creación de neologismos. Un trabajo de excelencia que denota la trayectoria y el buen hacer de quien cree firmemente que su profesión va más allá del simple trasvase de palabras, convirtiéndola en un profundo proceso de investigación, documentación y transformación”.
Biografías
Olivia de Miguel Crespo (Logroño, 1948)Traductora y profesora en la Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación de la Universidad Pompeu Fabra. Licenciada en Filología Anglogermánica por la Universidad de Zaragoza, es asimismo doctora en Teoría de la Traducción por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona con la tesis ‘La traducción del Modernismo norteamericano al castellano: el caso de Marianne Moore’.
En 2001 pone en marcha el Máster de traducción literaria y audiovisual y el Posgrado en línea en Traducción literaria del BSM/Pompeu Fabra, de los que ha sido directora hasta 2022. Actualmente sigue traduciendo literatura, dando cursos y conferencias.
Ha recibido el Premio Ángel Crespo de traducción 2005 por ‘Autobiografía’ de G.K. Chesterton (Acantilado, 2003), y el Premio Nacional de Traducción a la Mejor Traducción por ‘Poesía Completa’ de Marianne Moore, en 2011. Como traductora literaria ha trabajado con diversas editoriales, como Acantilado, Siruela, Alba, Tusquets, Destino, Hiperión, Galaxia Gutenberg, Edhasa, Ediciones del Bronce, Random House Mondadori, Global Rhythm, Tres Hermanas Editorial, Lamicro y J. Olañeta.
Pablo Martín Sánchez (Reus, 1977)Es doctor en Lengua y Literatura Francesas por la Université de Lille y doctor en Teoría de la Literatura y del Arte y Literatura Comparada por la Universidad de Granada. Miembro del Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo), trabaja habitualmente como traductor y profesor de escritura.
Como traductor, ha vertido al castellano obras de Marcel Schwob, Wajdi Mouawad, Marta Carnicero, Adeline Dieudonné, Édouard Louis, Delphine de Vigan, Yannick Haenel, Joan Benesiu, Violaine Bérot o Georges Perec. En 2022, ganó el premio de traducción Ángel Crespo por ‘La anomalía’, de Hervé Le Tellier.
Además, como autor ha publicado obras como ‘Fricciones’ (2024), ‘El anarquista que se llamaba como yo’ (Acantilado, 2012), ‘Tuyo es el mañana’ (Acantilado, 2016) y ‘Diario de un viejo cabezota’ (Acantilado, 2020), así como ‘Agatha’ (2017), una obra escrita en colaboración con Sara Mesa. Parte de su obra ha sido traducida al francés, inglés, checo y neerlandés.
Jurado
Los jurados de ambos premios, han estado presididos por María José Gálvez Salvador, directora general del Libro, del Cómic y de la Lectura del Ministerio de Cultura; como vicepresidente ha actuado Jesús González González, subdirector general de Promoción del Libro, la Lectura y las Letras Españolas, y han tenido como vocales a Arantzazu Etxebarria Iturrate, por la Real Academia de la Lengua Vasca/Euskaltzaindia; Xosé Antonio Palacio Sánchez (Antón Palacio Sánchez), por la Real Academia de la Lengua Gallega / Real Academia Galega; Joan Rafael Ramos Alfajarín, por la Academia Valenciana de la Lengua/ Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua; David Paradela López por la Asociación Colegial de Escritores de España. Sección Autónoma de Traductores (ACETT); José Ignacio Sánchez Sánchez (Ignacio Sánchez), por la Escuela de Traductores de Toledo y Carmen Francí Ventosa, por el Ministerio de Cultura.
Adicionalmente, el jurado del Premio Nacional a la Obra de un Traductor ha tenido como vocales a Montserrat Bacardí Tomàs, por el Instituto de Estudios Catalanes/Institut d’Estudis Catalans; Inmaculada Senra Silva, por el Centro de Estudios de Género de la UNED y Xabier Olarra Lizaso, traductor galardonado en la convocatoria de 2025.Probar traductor
Por su parte, el jurado del Premio Nacional de la Mejor Traducción ha tenido como vocales a Richard Mansell, por el Instituto de Estudios Catalanes/Institut d’Estudis Catalans; José María Díaz Lage, por el Centro de Estudios de Género de la UNED y a Marian Ochoa de Eribe, galardonada en la convocatoria de 2025."
Por Redacción Revista de Arte - 18 de octubre de 2026 0
https://revistadearte.com/noticia-destacada/premios-nacionales-a-las-mejores-traducciones-en-2026/
#metaglossia
#metaglossia_mundus
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Scoop.it!
The theme of the 2021 International Mother Language Day, “Fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society,” recognizes that languages and multilingualism can advance inclusion, and the Sustainable Development Goals’ focus on leaving no one behind. UNESCO believes education, based on the first language or mother tongue, must begin from the early years as early childhood care and education is the foundation of learning.
The idea to celebrate International Mother Language Day was the initiative of Bangladesh. It was approved at the 1999 UNESCO General Conference and has been observed throughout the world since 2000.
UNESCO believes in the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies. It is within its mandate for peace that it works to preserve the differences in cultures and languages that foster tolerance and respect for others.
Linguistic diversity(link is external) is increasingly threatened as more and more languages disappear. Globally 40 per cent of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand. Nevertheless, progress is being made in mother tongue-based multilingual education with growing understanding of its importance, particularly in early schooling, and more commitment to its development in public life.
Multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages which transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures in a sustainable way.
MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL
"The theme of the Day this year, "Fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society", thus encourages us to support multilingualism and the use of mother tongues, both at school and in everyday life. This is essential, because when 40% of the world's inhabitants do not have access to education in the language they speak or understand best, it hinders their learning, as well as their access to heritage and cultural expressions. This year, special attention is being paid to multilingual education from early childhood, so that for children, their mother tongue is always an asset."
— Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of International Mother Language Day
2021 CELEBRATIONS
The theme of the 2021 International Mother Language Day, “Fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society,” recognizes that languages and multilingualism can advance inclusion, and the Sustainable Development Goals’ focus on leaving no one behind. UNESCO believes education, based on the first language or mother tongue, must begin from the early years as early childhood care and education is the foundation of learning.
Events around the world
organized by the Embassy of Bangladesh in France and the Permanent Delegation of Bangladesh to UNESCO
Sunday 21 February, 3 pm (GMT+1)
Follow the event live(link is external)
organized by UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA)
Wednesday 24 February, 3.30 pm (GMT+3)
More information